Paisley Daily Express Monday May13, 2002.
He checked the fuel gauge - they were running low.
To top it all, the wind was changing. Graeme Houston had to land his hot air balloon as soon as he could.
Hundreds of feet below lay Stirling Castle.
To its right was an industrial estate with a field adjacent - a perfect landing site.
A reassuring smile to the passenger, a few blasts of the burner and they sailed gently down from the sky.
And just as the bottom of the basket made contact with the green grass the relative peace was shattered by a cacophony of sirens.
The eruption of sound was coming from the vans with blue flashing lights.
The two high flyers were surprised to see the vehicles speed towards them.
In no time Graeme and his colleague were being frog-marched to a room for some tough questioning by men in uniforms with serious looks on their faces.
"It was really funny", he says, smirking.
"We'd landed in the training ground of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and they wanted to question us.
"There had been no indication on the maps that this was a depot".
The 36 year old should just be thankful he didn't land anywhere near a nuclear power station…
"That is the no no. If you get within two miles they'll blow you out of the sky, no questions asked".
Graeme is one of the few commercial pilots operating in Scotland and his company - Scotair - celebrated their 10th anniversary on Valentine's Day this year.
He's flown in America, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland and landed in a few tight spots, including an ornamental roundabout in the middle of a town centre.
All this from a paisley man who wanted to be a rock star!
"I still don't understand it either", he says honestly.
Graeme ended up with his head in the clouds quite by accident.
It was while working for Loganair at Glasgow Airport that he was asked to help with the company balloon.
"It just so happened that I was introduced to the guy who'd be flying it and he took me up.
"It's not every day you get offered the chance to fly.
"He did something on that flight that sounds really naff - but he put the basket in the trees, just sat it there and it was the most surreal experience. I can still see the trees.
"He said he'd teach me to fly and I thought: 'Yes, I'll have a crack at this'"
Married to Lisa with son Luke, four, Graeme now lives near Biggar in Lanarkshire.
"It's a good central point", he explains.
The balloons lie in trailers to the rear of Graeme's farmhouse, which is currently being renovated.
"Foot and mouth closed us down last year so it meant most of the house got done", he says' looking round his cosy living room.
It's a good few miles away from Bishopton where he was brought up and Potterhill where he moved with his family and where his mum still lives.
It was while living in Paisley that he started work on the ramp for Loganair, pushing back the planes.
Wonderful.
"An airport is a wonderful place to work. It's quite exciting".
It got even more exciting when the company bought a balloon in 1987 and Graeme was asked to help the pilot out.
He was the crew, helping inflate the balloon, retrieve to and pack it all back up.
When the pilot left to take another job Graeme was summoned to the managing director's office.
"I was given the order: 'Find someone to teach you to fly the balloon'".
He did. And after getting the 16 hours required in his logbook and passing the four written exams he applied for the purple book - his private pilot's licence.
"It was strange because I had to go down south to get all the flying finished off and take my check-out qualifying flight down there.
"I was by myself sat in a coffee shop beside a castle with no one to celebrate with me".
A slight delay in receiving the purple book almost ended in disaster and Graeme had no plans to use planes, trains and automobiles to collect it.
"We'd been invited to take the balloon to Italy and I needed my licence to fly there. I sent by crew to Dover in the car and trailer and I flew to Gatwick, picked up my licence and got the train to Dover to meet them. We just made it ".
Graeme took over responsibility for the Loganair balloon, notching up 120 hours, with any one flight normally taking about an hour.
"I was very much left to my own devices. Then a new boss came in and the balloon was seen as a waste of time so I ended up flying a balloon for an estate agent company instead".
He was offered a job flying balloons in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1991, which he took up.
"It was an Absolute blast. I didn't have the responsibility of dealing with clients. I only met them on the field and took them out for an hour".
The following year he decided to set up his own business.
"I had the business plan together in January and we bought our first balloon - a 180,000 cubic feet Thunder and Colt which could carry eight passengers".
It cost them £23,000. They officially launched on Valentine's Day that year and waited for the phones to ring - and they did.
"That balloon lasted a year until we landed in a field sprayed with chemicals.
"From the air you can't see that and the chemical reacted with the fabric and was totally destroyed".
In 1993 he met wife Lisa, a receptionist at Thunder and Colt Balloons, when he took his balloon in for an inspection.
"I sat in reception for five hours so we got talking".
The couple were married in Kenya three years later.
Graeme's week is split between flying fee-paying passengers and piloting commercial balloons at specific venues.
"I just got the contract for Virgin", he says', which means he'll fly their balloon whenever they ask him to.
Early mornings and early evenings are the best time to fly - which can mean a 5am start.
And when the passengers arrive at 6am they're not at their most switched on…
"People are briefed about what to wear yet they turn up in open toed sandals or stilettos. I've even had people arrive wearing suits - it isn't an aeroplane!
"The other side are the ones with jackets and hats who're dressed up as if they're going up a mountain.
Fainted.
"It's a hot air balloon with the emphasis on hot air", he says. "I have had people who've fainted in the basket as they were wearing these puffa jackets".
As Graeme well knows, pilots are forbidden to fly in military areas. Other prohibited zones include controlled airspace and, as a general rule, fields with livestock in them.
'Red dot' areas are places where balloonists have landed in trouble - either with an angry farmer or a hostile crowd. Fortunately there aren't many such areas in Scotland.
"We usually get a row for not landing in farmer's fields. That's because they know they'll get a bottle of Champagne or Whisky as a thank you - it's a ballooning tradition.
"I have to go into Sainsbury's every now and then and buy 120 bottles of Champagne and loads of Whisky. Everyone asks if I'm having a party and I just say no", he sniggers.
Graeme's business was hard hit by the foot and mouth outbreak last year, as he couldn't risk spreading the disease by flying from field to field.
"We were shut down last year but I got the chance to go to San Diego in California and fly out there. If you don't fly at least once a year your licence lapses.
Funny.
"The funny thing was that when we got back the farmers were wondering where we'd been".
Now Graeme is playing catch up with the help of his assistant and the two pilots he's training. They're just back from Italy where they spent ten days flying in "very reliable weather".
Talking about the weather brings Graeme to another 'incident' involving an emergency landing in a school playground.
"It was when I was in Skipton. We were becalmed. The wind just disappeared and I had to land in an area the size of half a tennis court.
"It was a school playground, thankfully it was the weekend, but the police came out to do a report. The policeman filled out an accident report instead of an incident report by mistake and the Air Accident Investigations Branch came up to interview me. His error almost cost me my licence".
Despite his many years flying Graeme has never been able to fly over his hometown.
Airport.
"Getting permission is very difficult because of September 11. We couldn't fly over there anyway because of the airport".
In his spare time he likes to work on the house and indulge himself in his passion for cars. He tends to shy away from the more traditional balloonist who goes to competitions and enthusiast's rallies.
"I don't do competitions. And my wife and I don't talk about what I do if we're out because it ends in a million and one questions".
After that length of time spent handling balloons, dealing with puffa-jacket clad passengers and soaring high into the sky, the enthusiast is still having a ball.
"That's what it's about - going out there and having fun".
