FOX HOT AIRBeta
Free forever for every balloon pilot

Every weather model. One balloon briefing.

Stop reading four apps and guessing which to trust. Fox Hot Air blends every forecast model, finds your launch and landing sites, checks airspace and shows the winds you're actually flying in.

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Free forever. Works on iPhone and Android: add it to your home screen, no App Store needed.

Now in beta. Fly with it, and tell us what to improve from the Feedback tab in the app. We read every message.

Fox Hot Air briefing: CAUTION, GO on winds but watch fog, with the FAA airspace check and summary

One model pointed the wrong way. The blend didn't.

Below about 5 knots, weather models routinely disagree on direction. Before a sunrise flight in Cordele, Georgia, the most popular short-range model had the surface wind wrong. Blending every model caught it.

HRRR aloneSurface wind from the SE. Drift toward the NW, over town.
Fox Hot Air blend8 of 11 models said NE–E. Drift SW–W, over open farmland.
At launchNorth wind. The balloon went south over open country, just as the blend said.
Run full review: current location or search a city, pick the day and time, one button
One button

Where, when, go.

Use your location or type any town, pick the day and time you'd launch, from an hour from now in the hotel to five days out, and tap Run full review.

The answer comes first: GO CAUTION NO-GO, with the reasons, the FAA airspace check, and fog and thermal timing. Not sure about something? Ask about it right there on the briefing.

Winds aloft table: drift arrows, model agreement and an outlier model flagged
Winds aloft

Every altitude on one screen, every model behind it.

HRRR, NBM, GFS, ICON, ECMWF, GEM, the UK Met Office, Météo-France, JMA and more, blended the right way, with vector math, never by averaging directions. Surface to 5,000 feet, hour by hour, with drift arrows, how many models agree, and the outliers flagged.

Recommended launch site with landing options in a local pilots' green zone and at a church
Launch & landing sites

Where to launch, and where you'll come down.

  • Every park, sports field, school, church and small airfield nearby gets a simulated flight on the blended winds.
  • Ranked by what lies downwind: towns, water, power lines, airports and controlled airspace count against a site.
  • Landing fields on the drift line at 45 to 75 minutes, with local pilots' green zones and churches first, and nothing inside a red zone.
  • Directions to every launch and landing spot for you and your chase crew.
Real-time screen with heading, altitude, climb rate, speed and measured winds by altitude band
In flight

Your balloon measures the winds aloft.

Tap Fly and tracking starts: heading, altitude, climb rate and speed. Your balloon moves with the air, so your track is the wind. The Wind data panel shows heading and speed at every altitude band you've flown through, with the forecast beside it, so you know where the turn is when you want to steer. Power lines show in red on the map.

Fly screen with power lines drawn as solid red lines on the map
Power lines

Every power line we can find, in solid red.

Power lines are the most dangerous thing in ballooning, so every map in Fox Hot Air draws them as one solid red line, wherever you are in the US.

  • Where they come from: OpenStreetMap's power network, the transmission and distribution lines that utilities and volunteers have mapped.
  • Filling the gaps: where only the poles are on the map, Fox Hot Air joins neighboring poles (less than about 300 ft apart) into a line, because that's how lines run along roads.
  • On the map, not in your face: no alarms or pop-ups. Almost every road has a line, and constant warnings would only distract you while you fly.
  • Ready in the air: lines load for the area around you and are kept on your phone, so they stay on the map if your signal drops.

Not every power line is mapped. There's no public national database of power poles, so treat the red lines as a help, not a guarantee, and always look.

Zones tab with a local pilot's red and green zone map shared with every pilot
Local pilot zones

No more hunting for a local to AirDrop the map.

Local pilots share their red and green landing zones once, straight from Google Earth (KML or KMZ). Every Fox Hot Air pilot flying in that area sees them on their maps automatically, with the notes that matter: "No landing, livestock." "Gate code on the post." As pilots add their areas, it covers the whole country.

Flight log with a saved flight and the list of saved briefing records
Log & briefing records

Every flight, and proof of every briefing.

Flights are saved to your account with your track, pibal, notes and the winds you measured. Every briefing is saved with the time it was pulled and every source it checked, so a record that you reviewed all available weather information is there if you ever need it. Nothing is sent to the FAA.

Free forever. Up and flying in two minutes.

Fox Hot Air is a web app. It installs from your browser, so there's nothing to download from an app store.

  1. Create your free accountHere at foxhotair.com: your name, email and a password. No card, no trial, no catch.
  2. Add it to your home screenThe app shows you how: on iPhone, Share then Add to Home Screen; on Android, one tap.
  3. Tap the foxIt opens straight to your account, signed in, with your flights and briefings.

Made by balloon pilots who were tired of guessing which forecast to trust.

Built by a Rocket Scientist and Claude.