WADSWORTH — Early Friday morning, more than a dozen hot-air balloons took off from the Wadsworth Municipal Airport as a test flight for today’s Balloons Over Wadsworth.
Chris Smart, a commercial pilot from Roanoke, Indiana, and his team set up Dream Catcher III, a blue, white and pink hot-air balloon, shortly after 6 a.m. on Friday. Smart has been a pilot for more than 33 years and has completed more than 2,000 balloon flights.
Smart and his crew laid out Dream Catcher III at the airport before hooking all of the lines to the hot-air balloon’s basket. With everything secured, the team used a fan to start filling the balloon before using propane burners to fill the balloon completely…