Where it came from, who built it, and why it exists.
I have been flying hot air balloons commercially for thirty years. In that time I have learned exactly what a pilot needs — and what most tracking apps get wrong.
The first version of BalloonRadar came out roughly fifteen years ago. It was a basic Android app, built because nothing on the market actually worked the way a balloon flight works. Balloons don't follow roads. The driver needs to know where you're going, not where you are. Passengers want to follow from the ground without downloading anything. Airspace doesn't show up on consumer map apps at the right altitude. Prediction needs to account for wind at multiple layers, not just surface level.
BalloonRadar 2.0 is a complete rebuild. The old app is retired. This one is built on Flutter for Android, with a browser-based observer view that works on any device. Firebase handles the real-time data. Claude AI handles the flight planning.
I am a pilot, not a software developer. BalloonRadar 2.0 was built through amateur coding with AI tools — which means I could move at a speed and depth that would have been impossible otherwise. Every decision about what to build and how it should behave came from thirty years of standing in a field at 5am, watching the trees for wind direction.
The app is free. It always will be. BalloonRadar exists because the tools should exist, and because nobody else was building them the right way.
I have been deeply involved in the development of the DBI3 — a dedicated flight instrument for hot air balloon pilots. That work shaped a lot of how BalloonRadar thinks about telemetry and in-flight data. The two are designed to complement each other: DBI3 handles the cockpit instruments, BalloonRadar handles the team communication, tracking, and planning around the flight. As a BalloonRadar user, you can find your personal discount code for DBI3 in the app under Settings → Account.
It is not a subscription service. It is not funded by advertising. It does not sell your location data. It does not have a premium tier with the useful features locked behind a paywall.
It is a tool, built by someone who uses it, for people who need it.