Did you guess this one? If you did, we applaud you!
We posted across our channels on 8th March, "NEW BALLOON ALERT! Just picked up something special… But, what could it be? It’s a rare one!"
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We are pleased to welcome MJ Ballooning special shape no.9, Rozière G-BYNX! It joins our growing Bristol-based collection of special shape hot air balloons as a jointly owned envelope with Liam of Bristol Balloon Collectors and is the rarest balloon in the UK.
The History
On 22nd April 2000 telecoms companies joined forces to reorganise the telephone numbering system for a number of different areas, named "The Big Number Change". This affected mobiles and pages now starting 07, freephone and special rate numbers starting 08 and premium rate services starting 09. London, Cardiff, Coventry, Southampton, Portsmouth and Northern Ireland got new codes starting 02.
The advert stated "This new family of numbers will free up millions of others so we can all keep communicating. It's all part of the big number."
Watch TV Advert here on rsafilms.com
The balloon, registered G-BYNX, was specially built for this TV commercial, commissioned in 1999 by RSA Films in London. Filming took place in August 1999 for a week far away from home in Namibia, Africa at the Namib desert. The Namib is described as the world's oldest desert, stretching 2,000 kilometres, home to giant red sand dunes and incredible rock formations.
The symbolic cutting of wires releasing the balloon illustrated the release of the new telephone lines and numbers. Since the shoot, the balloon has been stored at the Cameron's factory in Bedminster, Bristol. That is, until now, 25 years later! A big thank you to Nick Purvis and the team at Cameron Balloons for recommending the balloon is given to us to look after and display.
Just 6 hours in the logbook and never free flown with 10 separate entries, the first of which was in Liverpool, presumably a private inflation prior to shipping to Africa. After such a long time stored away the balloon is now unairworthy and we will be conducting static displays only.
Our First Inflation
Here are pictures from the inflation day in Saltford on 20th April 2024, where it appeared alongside others of our collection, Sonic the Hedgehog, Maxwell House, plus many others. Quite a different scene to the desert! You can see G-BYNX is different to the standard teardrop balloon shape and has a rip panel deflation system. This shape is known as a Rozière. Two other hot air versions of this exact shape exist, but in silver; the Breitling Orbiter 3 replicas.
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Incredibly, this was the balloon's first ever appearance in front of members of the public. As always, stay tuned for our next special shape inflation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
View all special shape balloons under MJ Ballooning here.
