November 21st after noon
2-6pm
While the Science Shack team, local students and sympathetic helpers from ATG Ltd who build airships in this hangar help stick the balloon panels together, Adam tests out some unlikely paper plane designs. One is made of a tube of paper with two big tubes glued around it. And it flies!

6pm
The epic balloon panel sticking period is over. Now comes the really hard bit – getting the balloon into position and filling it with hot air. A strong wind is blowing into the hangar so we have to move it 200 yards to the other end of the building. That also means moving hundreds of yards of paper we have laid to cover the floor this end to protect the balloon from grit.

6.15pm
Producer Jonathan has decided we need a real balloon professional with us and manages to rustle up Stuart, one of Britain’s few dozen qualified balloon pilots. He has come armed with a proper flame thrower which should put enough heat into our balloon to get it airborn.

8pm
At this point, unfortunately, your lazy web correspondent gets roped into actually doing some useful work helping finish the balloon. This means that there are no exciting pictures of the making of stay ‘ropes’ out of sticky back fibre glass plastic and paper; the arguments about how we are actually going to attach Adam to this thing; the Producer’s brainwave of deciding to call for a fire engine to stand by, just in case; the carrying of the balloon all the way down the hangar (a very delicate, almost funereal, operation); the discovery that the other end of the hangar is very damp, the moving of plastic matting to the other end of the hangar; the discussions as to how much cold air to blow into the balloon before the hot air…

9.30pm
The balloon is laid out and a cold air fan is attached to it to blow it into shape before the hot air is blasted into it. Stuart tests out his massive balloon heating flame. We are all very relieved (especially the man from ATG who builds the airships in the hangar) that the fire brigade will be with us.

10pm
The balloon is starting to take shape. Adam – like most of the rest of us far from sure that a paper balloon was a realistic proposition – realises now that he may indeed find himself dangling off this thing. How he is going to be attached to the balloon is for the Science Shack team a minor detail at the moment. They will cross that bridge, jump that hurdle, build that contraption, when they get to it.

10.30pm
We decide that if a conspiracy theorist peered through a gap in the wall of this hangar and saw this extraordinary sight there would be another Rosswell Incident on the world’s hands.

Meanwhile the giant balloon turns from slug-like beast into a creature we are all starting to fall in love with.

11pm
Glenn is taken aloft in a crane to delicately adjust the tapes which hang from the top of the balloon. It is crucial they do not pull on the outside of the balloon and break it open.

The balloon starts to roll ominously. Glenn gets underneath it to coax the panels outwards as they fill with air.

11.35pm
Jonathan heroically dives under the balloon to effect rescue operations on folds which need unfolding under the balloon.

The balloon is almost ready for Stuart the balloon pilot to get inside and heat up with his flame.

Tune in to find out what happens next...

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