'Balloon Man' Shares Long-Lost Footage of Flight
Man flies in lawn chair with balloons and shares the incredible video.
— -- After floating nearly 200 miles in a lawn chair with helium balloons attached, Kent Couch made an emergency landing.
He was safe, but his equipment and video footage were lost, swept up by a gust of wind.
But now, nearly a year later, his incredible first-person footage and equipment have been found by a family on its ranch.
The stunning long-lost video shows Couch's beaming smile and aerial views of airplanes below him as he floats for nine hours and more than 193 miles in his lawn chair. He is captured popping balloons with a letter opener and accidentally inhaling helium, making his voice squeak.
"Uh-oh," Couch says to the camera, his pitch high. "I'm talking with helium in it."
While in the air, Couch took time to admire his surroundings.
"It's beautiful," he says on the videotape with Oregon's landscape seen below Couch's feet.
The quirky flight started as the fulfillment of a childhood dream. "You look up and see the clouds," Couch says. "And you say, what would it be like to sit on the cloud?"
The fanciful odyssey had an inspiration: Couch had once seen a television show about how such a feat could be accomplished.
The episode was inspired by Larry "Lawn Chair" Walters, who floated over Los Angeles using weather balloons in 1982.
In July, Couch tied 105 helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair and took off, soaring higher than helicopters and small airplanes to 13,000 feet.
Couch and his supplies weighed about 310 pounds, and each balloon weighed about 5 pounds. He used approximately 200 pounds of ballast to keep him anchored at the appropriate altitude.
But dangerous conditions forced Couch to cut short his goal of flying from Oregon to Idaho and land his homemade aircraft.
"I grabbed my knees … tucked and rolled out," Couch said as he described the landing to "Good Morning America" after his flight. He floated eastward toward his intended destination of Idaho and he touched down in a field near Union, Ore.
The father of five may have been safe on the ground, but wind took Couch's chair and thousands of dollars in equipment high into the sky. His gear was replaceable, but Couch also lost his video camera, still attached to the chair, that contained the only footage that documented his flight.
"It was a successful landing, but not a successful day totally because I lost my gear," Couch said last summer.
But earlier this month, Couch's chair, cell phone, Global Positioning System and, most importantly, the video camera were found.
"It was so exciting," Couch said of the phone call announcing his chair and equipment had been found. "I thought they would never find it. I was sure it was gone."
Ranchers made the discovery only about 13 miles from where Couch had landed.
Couch, a gas station owner, said he is planning another take-off on July 5. If the weather permits, Couch said he wants to float 200 to 300 miles away to his original destination of Idaho.
Although she said she was hesitant to agree to another of Couch's flights, his wife, Susan, finally gave the OK.
"Reluctantly, yes, I'll let him go back up," she told "Good Morning America" with a laugh. "Can't let a good man stay down."
In the meantime, as Couch prepares for another flight, he and his family are treasuring the long-lost footage of his previous flight.