On July 2, 1982, a Los Angeles man named Larry Walters decided to attempt flight in a lawn chair attached to forty five Army surplus weather balloons filled with helium.
Armed with sandwiches, soft drinks, a camera and an air gun for shooting the balloons to regulate his altitude, Walters took off from his backyard, intent on allowing the prevailing winds to carry him over the mountains to the Mojave Desert.
But Walters drifted into the airspace of Los Angeles International Airport. A TWA airliner gave controllers a visual report that must have sounded like the pilots were on drugs, something like, “LAX, we are level at 16,000 feet. We have a man flying in a lawn chair with balloons at ten o’clock.â€
Walters used the pellet gun to lower himself back to earth, where police were waiting for him. He was charged by the FAA with violations relating to the airworthiness of his craft and for not being in contact with air controllers.
His $4,000 fine was eventually reduced to $1,500. Walters appeared on national talk shows, including David Letterman.
Lawn chair Larry, as he was dubbed, was never able to make much money from his fifteen minutes of fame, and sadly, he committed suicide on October 6, 1993.
