The Midlands Air Festival is always one of the highlights of the hot air ballooning season, and 2026 certainly didn't disappoint. With three special shapes from our collection on site, some fantastic weather and plenty of flying opportunities, it turned out to be a brilliant weekend from start to finish. From memorable flights in Slick the Dragon and the Orange to bringing the Philips light bulb back to a major UK ballooning event after many years, here's a look back at our weekend at Ragley Hall.
The Midlands Air Festival is one of the UK's biggest aviation and ballooning events, held annually at Ragley Hall in Alcester, Warwickshire. Taking place from 29-31 May 2026, the festival combines air displays, mass hot air balloon launches, special shape balloons, model aircraft demonstrations and the popular Nightfire evening show with fireworks and night glow.
This year was my fifth year of attending Midlands with balloons from our collection, which began in 2022 when we flew Lips and tethered Choc Dips. Since then, Slick the Dragon has been our main flying shape and has become very popular with the Ragley crowds. Everyone loves Slick, don’t they? Last year we had the Maxwell House coffee jar flying alongside and were planning on something similar for the 2026 event.
You may have seen on our social media accounts at the end of last season that I would be taking a break from the special shapes this season. After my trip to Albuquerque last October, I returned home feeling completely burned out, and I really was planning to have a year off from doing anything with my balloons and just keep them in storage until our return in 2027. It was a fantastic trip to the USA, and I loved it, but it felt like I had tried to do too much overall last season, also with visits to Sint-Niklaas, Telford and Longleat later in the year. However, as Christmas passed and I enjoyed a prolonged break from thinking about getting the shapes out, I decided that I didn’t want to stop completely - but we would need to take a different approach to make things more manageable, and ultimately, more enjoyable. This year we are concentrating on flying at the bigger events and not committing to rushing to the tether arena straight after flying. My collection is unique as we have a lot of real special shapes (not add-on rounds) that are still in airworthy condition, so I really want to get good use out of these and enjoy the flying. Also shapes like Sonic and Action Man need to be rested so they can still be displayed for years to come. Midlands would be our first event with this plan, although it would still be enough to keep us very busy indeed. Instead of taking 6+ shapes to events, we plan to take no more than 2-3 this year.
For the 2026 Midlands Air Festival we would be in safe hands with two very experienced pilots. Bradley Lewis has been our main pilot since we started and would be flying his favourite shape of ours, Slick the Dragon (G-PNAD), built by Lindstrand Balloons in 2010. Alex Harvey of All Flying Colours, who has previously flown the coffee jar for us, would be flying another of our collection this time - the Orange (G-CDXW), from Cameron Balloons in 1993! Slick is a crowd favourite, and we managed to get its C of A renewed the week before, while the Orange already had a valid C of A until 25th July.
As we approached the event, the forecast looked fairly promising. About a week away from the first Friday AM slot, it looked as though Friday AM and Saturday AM may be the only opportunities to free fly. But as we got closer to the event, the winds dropped out so both those evenings also became flyable. Saturday morning in particular was looking very slow, providing perfect conditions for complex special shapes. As a last-minute thing, I decided we would also take the Philips light bulb (G-BVWI), built by Cameron’s in 1995, initially to tether in the Cameron tethering arena, but this soon changed…
Wednesday arrived and the van was loaded with Slick, Philips and our basket, with fantastic help from our team, and we were ready to meet Alex and his crew at the site on Thursday who already had the Orange after flying from Bath the previous weekend. As I was stocking up on bottles of water for the team as it was looking like a warm few days ahead, Bradley, our Slick pilot, messaged me asking about the light bulb. It only joined our collection in August, and we haven’t had it out much yet. It also has a C of A, meaning it can be flown, until 1st July. We decided on Saturday morning that if the conditions were right, Bradley would attempt to fly it across the arena, leaving the ground for the first time since 1997. 29 years! It was an exciting prospect and something I was really hoping we could achieve.
So, we were all set and arrived at Ragley Hall on Thursday night. The forecast looked superb apart from Sunday, and we had three of my absolute favourites of the collection on site ready to go. People, whether friends or followers of the website, often ask me which of the 17 balloons we have are my favourites and it’s a really difficult question because it changes from season to season. Action Man is usually my number one but these three are real showstoppers, which we very much enjoy displaying to the public.
After attending the Friday morning briefing, our team headed onto the launch field ready to begin setup of Slick and the Orange. It was fast in the air, so the general thoughts of Bradley and Alex were that they’d stay low, either just hopping across the field or flying for five minutes to the field behind the house. Alex did the latter and Bradley hopped Slick low level. As many of you will know, special shapes cannot fly at the same wind speed as standard round balloons.
  |   |
Image credits: Orange - Barney Morrison, Slick - MJ Ballooning
The Orange was the oldest flying special shape at Midlands this year and it doesn’t operate like a standard balloon, or Slick even, as it does not have a parachute. A third of the side is missing due to the segment shape meaning that when it was built a parachute could not be fitted. My job during setup on the field was to seal the Velcro rip panel at the very top of the balloon, ready for flight.
A rip panel is a large section of fabric that is held closed by Velcro and metal locks during flight. When the pilot wants to land, they pull a red rip line from the basket. This opens the panel, allowing a large amount of hot air to escape quickly. Once opened, it cannot be re-sealed. On special shapes, rip panels can be positioned in unusual places to suit the design. For example, a character balloon such as Snow White has two rip panels hidden in the back of its head and back.
The Orange has a large rectangular panel at the top, which is secured by a metal rip lock on both corners. Two of our crew and I start on the sides of the panel, with two people pulling it tight away from each other, and ensuring any white load tape is not stuck to the Velcro, allowing for a strong seal. The key to ensuring the panel is properly in place is the corners, which should be completely flush with no ripples. As the panel is slightly bigger than the hole it sits in to allow for some “give”, there are often a few small ripples along the Velcro, which is normal, but we always make sure these are away from the corners. Once sealed, I peel back the corners and tie the metal rip locks into position. The hot air means that even without tying the corners it’s unlikely it would ever fall out, but this is extra insurance. I join just the corners and look at how the locks naturally sit, insert it through the loop of white material, cut some strong thread and tie 2-3 knots. It’s a balance because you don’t want it too tight so that the panel won’t open, or too loose. We then join the Velcro back up and we are ready for inflation. It’s a lot easier doing this without any air in the balloon, and the whole process takes between 15-20 minutes. I then walk inside during cold inflation and tie the red line up to a pully, which means there’s no excessive amount of red line on the floor of the basket in flight. Once Alex is ready to land, he can pull it, releasing more of the red line from inside the balloon, ready for the panel to be pulled out. Easy, eh?
After some windy inflations in the tether arena that afternoon, things were shaping up for the evening as the gusts were due to die down giving us excellent flying conditions. It ended up being the highlight of the event for us with both the Orange and Slick taking off within 10 seconds of each other.
 |  |
Image credit: Ballooning Pictures UK
After a challenging flight with lots of balloons below and alongside us, plus limited landing opportunities, we flew for 45 minutes in the Orange, eventually landing before we reached Stratford-upon-Avon. Slick flew for slightly less time landing a bit before us with a handful of other teams. We were even joined by the new Ultramagic balloon Finley the Turtle!
 |  |
It was a real buzz being in the air that night also with many other special shapes flying including the Wera screwdriver (D-OWTR), Iggy the baby purple dragon (PH-MAM) and Smiley scarecrow (N315LL) from the USA making its first ever UK flight.
 |  |
We made it back just in time for the night glow, which featured a number of interesting balloons including new Snowy the Wolf (G-SWNY), Captain Jack (G-OIIY) and Frog (PH-GDG). The Frog prince was making its first UK appearance this weekend since being transformed from a standard green round envelope some years ago into this cool add-on shape! The night glow is the main part of the Nightfire event which takes place every Friday night at the Midlands Air Festival, but also includes aircraft loaded with fireworks on their wings performing and concludes with a large firework display.
 |  |
The first day was a huge success, both for the event and for us as a team.
After just four hours of sleep, the alarm soon went off and we all got ready for another busy day of ballooning ahead. Saturday morning briefing was at 5:30am, so we left the hotel at 4:45am to give us plenty of time. Conditions were perfect and we flew two of our special shapes alongside an incredible 124 other balloons!
Alex was in the Orange, making its fourth flight in a week, which he flew for 45 minutes and even managed a “splash and dash” in the lake! Top piloting!
 |  |
 |  |
Image credits: Ballooning Pictures UK & MJ Ballooning
We gave Slick the morning off and the time had come for us to attempt a short flight in the Philips light bulb, which would be its first time leaving the ground in nearly 30 years. We agreed that we’d be unlikely to have better conditions and a better launch site to try it. It’s not a simple balloon to set up so it took us quite a long time to get it ready. Philips operates using an RDS (rapid deflation system) parachute between the tubes and a triangular Velcro rip, held in by one rip lock, at the top of the central tube. It weighs over 200kg and is only an active 65, meaning it holds 65,000 cubic feet of air, which sounds a lot, but this is not a lot at all for such a heavy balloon. This means it must be flown pilot solo and with as light a basket and few cylinders as possible to give as much lifting capacity as we can.
 Image credit: Alfie Jobbins |  |
Due to the large gap between the tubes, which is unique to this balloon, it likes to spin a lot. Handling lines on each side were fitted after its first inflations back in 1995 so the crew can prevent it from spinning resulting in the mouth of the balloon closing. When on the ground ready for take off the basket is constantly moving position because of the wind catching the tubes. We have to be careful with these old shapes that are airworthy on paper, because although during the inspection they pass a grab test and look okay on the ground, some are not actually safe to properly free fly. Although low houred, the light bulb is a very difficult balloon to fly. Bradley successfully managed two short hops across the field, and it was fantastic to get yet another of our collection in the air.
Once we had packed up, had some breakfast and put on plenty of sun cream (it was very hot!), we walked over to the tether arena to watch and help on some other huge special shapes, which I was excited to see. Normally we’d be getting ready to set up Action Man or another large balloon from our collection, but it was nice this year just to chill out a bit during the day.
First up was the retro Servo Connectors hopper (G-OSVO) from the BBM&L and inflated by Jonathan Harris. This is one of only a handful of special shape cloudhoppers in the world. Second was the Wish Cake (PH-TJL), which has recently been acquired by our good friend Gerard van der Pluijm from the Netherlands and also featured in our top 25 greatest special shapes of all time list (loyal followers will remember what I mean!) A few years ago, it was bought from the USA by Herman Kleinsmit, who used to fly the Superbike. I had only seen the Wish Cake once at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta in 2018 for their 40th anniversary and I’m sure we can all agree that day it did not look its best. But, inflated in the calm winds at Ragley, it looked superb, and it was amazing to see it again. Thomas the Tank Engine (G-BXND) from the Bristol Balloon Collectors was next to be inflated, later joined by the Orient Express (G-LOKO) from Gerard’s Team for Old Balloons collection. Both looked great, and it was nice to see the inside of the Orient.
 |  |  |
 |  |
During the afternoon tether slot from 3-4pm the Harley Davidson (G-BMUN) from Malcolm Forbes’ famous collection was inflated. If you weren’t there, the pictures really don’t do justice to how enormous this balloon is. Three fans were used, one on the mouth in the usual position, and one each through the Velcro openings on the wheels. I never thought I’d be lucky enough to see any of the Forbes collection, and it was a very special couple of hours. Sadly, the wind was a little strong and it’s so porous that Nicolas, Francois and team didn’t quite manage to stand the Harley up as planned. Look at the colour difference of the red above both wheels - it shows how barely any heat reaches the front wheel as this fabric has kept its bright colour. No fabric has been replaced, it’s all original. Cameron Balloons built the Harley in 1986, and no balloon had ever been made like this at the time. It truly is a piece of ballooning history and now resides in France with the Chateau and globe.
 |  Image credit: Barney Morrison |
On Saturday evening, the forecast was not quite so favourable with winds at 1,000ft picking up from 10kts to 15kts during the flying period. As we were flying special shapes, we weren’t too keen to go on a long flight out of the estate so decided to go for a short flight instead, staying in the grounds of Ragley Hall.
 |  |
Bradley was first to take off in Slick the Dragon and landed after a lovely 5-10 minute flight. Alex was keen to give the light bulb a go, so we left the orange in the trailer and got Philips out for another short flight. You can see on Instagram that although we didn’t fly it too high, it most definitely did leave the ground with nobody holding onto the basket. See other videos on Insta too! Once we had done a few short hops we re-attached the balloon to the vehicle and as we were now much closer to the public, tethered for 15 minutes so they could get a closer look. Meanwhile the Brandenburg Gate (D-OBBT) special shape was also inflated. It was a pleasure to bring Philips back to a major UK ballooning event after so many years.
 Image credit: Ballooning Pictures UK |  |  |
Sunday was too windy to do any ballooning, so after saying our goodbyes, we headed back to Bristol at lunchtime and put the balloons back into the two lockups in the evening.
And just like that, we have reached the end of this blog. Thank you so much for reading.
This weekend has reminded me why I love ballooning so much. It brings so much happiness to everyone involved and creates memories that last a lifetime. Who else can go back to work and say they flew in a giant dragon or an orange over the weekend as though it’s completely normal? Well, me I guess… we have the absolute best hobby! Although it’s a bit bigger than just a hobby for us now.
All the setbacks, expense, and logistical challenges we go through to make weekends like this happen are made worth it when the sun shines and we get to fly in these incredible balloons and display them for the public. I feel we put on a great show this year.
I’m also lucky to have such amazing pilots who are kind enough to fly the shapes, and a team of great, enthusiastic people that has grown significantly this year. Big thanks to Bradley, Alex and Colin and their team, Chris, Nettie, Barney, Vince, Gary, Cam, Sarah and Luke for being on our team.
We are already looking forward to the next adventure! Midlands 2026, thank you! - Matt
