Balloon pilot Noah Forden, who is flying his homebuilt ultralight hot-air balloon this week at EAA AirVenture, brought the aircraft here inside another aircraft -- the Van's RV-7 that he built in his garage in Rhode Island. He's been building balloons for about 25 years, he told AVweb last week, and already had designed a small one-man balloon that could fit inside his car, without the need to tow a trailer or have a special vehicle. When he finished building the RV-7, he decided it would be nice to be able to fly off to distant hot-air balloon events with his own aircraft tucked inside the airplane, so he designed an ultralight system that fits.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/air-shows-events/a-homebuilt-balloon-for-a-homebuilt-airplane