On the morning of Saturday, February 28, 2026, a brightly colored hot air balloon launched near Longview, Texas. There were two on board. I haven’t seen anything that mentions the weather. It would be very interesting to know more about what the wind was like that morning. So far, the only data I’ve seen is from the fire department, which reported between 9 and 17 knots, with gusts of 21 knots at 1,000 feet above ground level. They were not particularly interested in the direction of the wind.
But as a hot air balloon pilot, you have to be. Hot air balloons have very limited lateral control. Changing altitude is the main method of finding different wind directions. To some extent, you just go where the wind takes you.
In this case, the wind carried the hot air balloon too close to a guyed mast.
A guyed mast is a thin lattice structure, typically made of steel, held upright by sets of guy cables anchored to the ground at intervals, essentially a tall pole stabilized by cables. A freestanding tower over 400 feet becomes structurally more demanding and prohibitively expensive. Guyed masts can be built very high and are relatively cheap; Transmission masts typically reach 1000 feet or more with this design. However, they also take up much more space due to the tension lines.
The FCC registration lists this particular mast at 352 meters (1,155 feet). Built in 1996, its anchor tenant is KYKX 105.7 FM, who pride themselves on offering the best country music in East Texas.
Around 8 a.m. local time, the hot air balloon collided with a tension cable on the mast.
I know this is extremely pedantic, but all the headlines talk about the collision with the mast. But when you work with ships, and I also feel hot air balloons, it’s important to distinguish between a collision, in which both subjects are moving, and an alliance, where a moving subject collides with a stationary one. The guyed mast was going nowhere, so it was an alliance.
They ran into the tension cable, which tore the balloon’s envelope.
A hot air balloon has three main parts: the envelope (the cloth bag that contains the hot air), the burner (which heats the air), and the basket (where the pilot and passengers are located).
The torn fabric wrapped around the wire and became tangled in the mast structure. The basket with the pilot and passenger hung helplessly 925 feet above the ground.
They used a mobile phone to declare an emergency. They closed the fuel valve and attempted to secure the basket. And then they waited.
The Longview Fire Department received an emergency dispatch at 8:15 and 35 firefighters responded to the scene. Shortly before 9:00 a.m., firefighters were ready to begin a rescue attempt.
Lt. Stephen Winchell of the Longview Fire Department described the operation as “the Super Bowl of rope rescue.” With 18 years of rope rescue experience, he said he had never worked above 350 feet before. Fourteen firefighters climbed the structure using multiple rope systems at different heights. Drones were deployed to monitor conditions and confirm the exact height of the entanglement.
Those drones also gave us this great video posted by the Longview Fire Department.
Experience the Longview Fire Department’s dramatic rescue nearly 1,000 feet in the air, in what experts believe is the highest climbing rope rescue in the history of the fire service.
Sans Hawkins, the chief engineer of KYKX He said his top priorityWhen he first heard about the collision, he was supposed to stop broadcasting country music.
Sometimes I feel the same way about country music too. But this was for a good reason.
The balloon had struck the guy wire just 43 feet below the active FM antenna. KYKX transmits at 100 kW ERP. ERP (effective radiated power) is the measure of how much signal an FM station actually emits. In North America, 100 kW is the maximum: a full power commercial FM station. For comparison, a low-power community FM station might run between 10 and 100 watts.
there is a great thread about radio towers in the Mike Holt Forum, a reference forum for electrical professionals. It especially caught my attention this comment about the risk of FM vs AM:
Higher frequencies have greater warming effects on the body. Standing next to a 50 KW AM tower will have virtually no effect on you, but if you climb a tower and hang next to an FM antenna radiating 50 KW, you will feel it… the tower climbers of yesteryear tell me that first you will feel heat in your eyes and testicles. RF exposure standards are weighted based on frequency…the higher the frequency, the greater the risk of tissue damage due to heating. There’s more to it than that, but it’s too much to discuss here.
What you need to know, if you’re going to hit a communications mast, is that AM and FM operate at very different frequencies and that the human body absorbs RF energy much more efficiently at FM frequencies than it does at AM. Aim for the morning.
There is a real world case of securitysolutionsrf where a climber wearing protective gear discovered that even at 10 percent power, RF levels near FM antennas were dangerously high. When two of the three stations came back on at full power without warning, the climber’s protective suit began to smoke.
It’s easy to understand why Hawkins said his first priority was to get KYKX off the air.
The climbers reached the two occupants around 10:00 a.m. One was standing in the basket; the other was sitting. Crews secured the basket to the mast with a half-inch static rope and then handed the harnesses to the occupants. They both put on their harnesses and then left the basket. They headed for the structure, more than 900 feet above the ground in a 20 mph wind. At 11:00 a.m., both occupants of the balloon were secured to the mast.
The descent lasted almost two more hours, and both reached the ground, unharmed and apparently in good spirits, at 12:45, almost five hours after hitting the cable.
That Monday, Tower King crews climbed the mast again to remove the balloon. He Wireless Estimator wrote about the high angle rescue:
The hot air balloon that became entangled in a transmission tower north of Longview, TX, was safely removed by Tower King technicians Marshall Salsman and his nephew Adrian Salsman, who used specialized rigging and a cable-suspended work platform more than 900 feet in the air to lower the balloon’s gondola and recover the canopy. After climbing the tower to install ropes, a winch and a basket, the crew secured and cut the balloon, carefully lowering the gondola before collecting the large envelope, a difficult task in the wind. Although both men are experienced tower workers, Marshall, who has 30 years in the industry, said the unusual balloon entanglement required adapting to a different situation than typical tower work.
And to the relief of country music lovers in East Texas, KYKX resumed broadcasting.
