Mister Bup Balloon Team

Flown in:

Mister Bup was brought to life thanks to the passion that pilot Lenny Cant has for special shape balloons. Since he was a child he was already fascinated by special shape balloons. Since he grew up in the region of Sint-Niklaas (Belgium) he anually got to see several beautiful special shape balloons during the balloon festival in Sint-Niklaas. After a first visit to the biggest ballooning event in the world, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, he knew that someday he wanted to have his own special shape.

In 2005 his plans for buying a special shape balloon got serious. What the shape would look like was still unknown at that time. He wanted to create a nice, special and easy to handle special shape. Another important thing was that the balloon would have to be very popular with the kids. After a lot of thinking and brainstorming the idea for a turtle shaped balloon was founded. A first drawing was made in September 2005 and was sent to Cameron Balloons. At that time it was already certain that Cameron Balloons would build the special shape, since the are the world’s undisputed leader in building special shape balloons.

Cameron Balloons sent a quotation and a digitalised visual for the turtle balloon mid October 2005. The initial colours were purple, pink, dark green and blue. The colours were to dark and a new visual was requested.

Apart from the new colours Cameron Balloons was also asked to give the turtle’s shoes some shoe laces. At the end of October 2005 the new visual arrived. The turtle looked much beter an brighter but it still wasn’t 100% what we were looking for.The colours that were used for the second visual were yellow, red, en light green (see visual above).

Once again we contacted Cameron Balloons and asked for a third visual with another set of colours. The colours that were used in the third visual eventually turned out to be the final colours of Mister Bup. At this point we were almost at the stage of ordering the balloon.

To discuss all the details concerning this balloon the team decided to go to the Cameron Balloons factory in Bristol (UK). In November 2005 Lenny Cant went to the UK and discussed all the details of the balloon with a Cameron Balloons sales representative. During that meeting the last version of the visual was also finalised. The shoes got some extra details and the eyes of Mister Bup were repositioned.

Back in Belgium (early December 2005) we contacted the Belgian Cameron Balloons dealer to place the order. Cameron Balloons has been working on Mister Bup from December 2005 until June 2006.

Now how got the turtle his name Mister Bup? A balloon has to have (just like e.g. a car) a registration. In Belgium they always start with OO-B.. . ’OO’ stands for Belgium and ’B’ is used for all balloon registrations. Because Belgium has had a lot of new balloons the last couple of years there aren’t many registrations left. Because the registration has to be on the balloon we decided to use the registration in the name of the turtle. The only ’good sounding’ registration that was still available was OO-BUP. That’s the real reason why this cool turtle is now called ’Mister Bup’.

All the facts on Mister Bup:
Manufacturer: Cameron Balloons
Year of Construction: 2006
Type: Cameron Turtle 120
Volume: 3.400m³
Serialnumber: 10832
Weight: 270 kg
Height: 33 meters
Callsign: OO-BUP
Countries visited: 18
First Flight: 06/23/2006 Hardenberg - The Netherlands