wilbau: Balooning Ufo Drones

A sandcorn in my eye? What's this dot on the sky?
And now there are even more! (Rubbing my eyes :).
Drones? Ufos? (Unidentified Flying Objects). UAV s? (Unmanned aerial vehicles)
Hm, these dots are slowly moving from the west to the east. That's generally how the weather works here.
Military drones have shown up in a couple of places:

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Looking into the newspaper is clarifying the situation: There's a Balloon Competition.

I've never been ballooning. Would be probably interesting to see the world from above. There are even courses for this kind of sport. In St. Wolfgang there is a kind of airport for ballooning. ('BallonFahren' in German).
What does a balloon cost? The breakdown of the cost of a hot air balloon. Prices vary depending on the size of the balloon. Something between $ 25.000.- up to 50.000.- (please tell if you build cheaper ones :).
Here are also tips on buying a used hot air balloon.
For amateur doityourself building: Why and how to build a hot air balloon. (If you dare :).
The building process of an hot-air-balloon.

However you can just take a tour with a balloon in the Salzkammergut (Upper Austria). As this area is in the midst of the Austrian Alps you can expect real nice panorama views of the mountains here. Prices are around 300-400 €. The balloon travel itself lasts one and a half hours. It takes also time for the preparations.

If all these suggestions exeed your financial possibilites you could become a small time pilot like the one I filmed in last summer:

-o-o-o-

However I can't identify myself with a model airplane, would rather identify myself with a bird :)
An interesting solution for watching things from above would be this technology from microdrones.
Here is a video showing some possibilites of this unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

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Well and of course 4 all of us Internet Junkies there is the possibility of Google Maps to see things of earth from above.
For example the sad situation in Haiti.