Balloon mystery solved!

This is the balloon that was floating above Mullingar around 7pm yesterday.

It drew a small crowd to Clonmore Industrial Estate, where its operator, Jon Woodford of Ilevation Imaging, was conducting tests.

Friends Abbie Cannon and Ciara Lynch from Ashefield in Mullingar were so curious they got Abbie’s mother to drive them on a search to see what was going on.

Michael Clinton and Regan Kelly from Raheen were in the town centre when they saw the balloon, and wandered down to the back of the railway station to see what they could see.

When the Westmeath Examiner arrived, Mr Woodford was winding the balloon back in, and he was happy to explain to everyone what it was all about.

“The balloon is American and I made the other parts (the cradle for holding the camera, plus various fittings),” he said, and “there’s a wireless link from the camera to the tablet [computer].”

“It’s a start-up business based in Mullingar, and doing aerial stills and video.”

It’s taken Jon a year to get the project to this stage, and he has had some commissions already, including the Life Festival at Belvedere.

He’s had the odd setback too, such as the time he lost a balloon and a camera because the cable he bought on eBay was supposed to be rated at 200kg but turned out to have a tolerance of only 20kg.

The balloon is made of “space plastic” and is filled with helium, and the cables are Chinese, as “they are mad keen on kites” and therefore have the latest technology, said Jon.

See http://www.ilevation.ie/ for more.