Hokey Smokes!  The Delta Solar Hot Air Balloon!  A real life solar powered balloon!  When I saw this at Loony Lizard I thought I must be dreaming!  One buck for your very own personal solar blimp?  I'm in!

Here's the Delta Solar Hot Air Balloon in its package.  My dad told me to put a coin there to show the scale.   That's a toonie.  Twoonie?  Twonie?
	We couldn't wait to launch this thing!  If it worked I was looking forward to launching my cat or maybe a small message.
My dad got right into this.
	First thing we have to do is tie one end shut with the 'supplied strings.'  But the supplied strings weren't supplied so we cut a piece of the guy line with a key and used that instead.
Once one end was tied we let the breeze fill it up.  At this point there's no doubt in my mind that it's going launch into the stratosphere once we let go of it.  But if you look carefully at the left side you can see that we didn't tie that end very well.  We didn't notice until much later unfortunately.
	So now we tie the other end with the guy line.
The instructions said that we should wait a few minutes for it to launch.  But it seemed kind of saggy.
	My dad checks it out and figures we just didn't fill it up with enough air.
So he runs with it a bit to fill it up some more.
	That didn't make much of a difference either.
My dad has a great idea:  just pull a large piece of material through your hand and then pinch it off.
	But now the sun wasn't co-operating.  It sat behind this cloud for awhile.  It was pretty frustrating.  How were the solar rays from the sun going to heat the air in the balloon enough if that cloud was in the way?  ARG!
My dad said "Maybe I can just blow it up."
	He couldn't.
We had had just about enough at this point so we really tied it down small.  It was really taut but also really small.
	Stars said it looked like a giant Tootsie Roll.
It flew like one too.
	I figured that the extra material on either end was dead weight now and the Delta Solar Hot Air Balloon wasn't designed to work that way.  So I suggested we cut off the ends.  We didn't have a knife though so Stars tried to burn it with a lighter.  That didn't work so she used her trusty nail file.
Still no dice.  It was going up a bit higher but I think the breeze had more to do with it than solar energy.  You can see my dad on the swing.  He was pretty disappointed.
	Here's an even better shot of my disappointed dad.
Finally, Stars tried to tied it up like a kite and fly it that way.  It worked pretty well but when she said that it was now too full of air we knew it was a losing battle.
	Poor thing.   At the end of it all though I had to face up to the fact that the Delta Solar Air Powered Sun Balloon was nothing more than a garbage bag and a piece of fishing line.  Ah well.