The hot air balloons of the Zhenyuan Escort Bureau are basically black, and with a curtain underneath, enemies outside the city can't see them at all.
The hot air balloon floated out of Yuguan City quietly.
Now is the season when the north wind prevails. After the hot air balloon takes off, it flies southward with the wind.
However, there was only one chance for a sneak attack. In order to maximize the value, Liu Tie and Mr. Tian agreed that the Dongman was the first target, and let the hot air balloon kill the Dongman commander first, or burn down the opponent's grain depot.
Therefore, after the hot air balloon flew out of Yuguan City, even if it flew over the Shanxi-Barbarian coalition, it did not launch an attack. Instead, it continued to rise and look for other wind directions.
At different heights at the same location, the wind direction is also different.
But when the hot air balloon rose to nearly a thousand feet, it still couldn't find the right wind direction.
There are two pilots on the hot air balloon. One is responsible for controlling the stove and controlling the rise and fall of the hot air balloon. He is considered the master controller.
The other one is responsible for preparing hot oil and some auxiliary work, and is considered a deputy.
The deputy opened the curtain and took a look outside, his brows furrowed involuntarily.
With the current technology of Xihewan, there is no way to produce an instrument for measuring altitude, so pilots usually judge altitude through ropes and visual inspection.
There is a thin rope with heavy objects hanging on the outside of the gondola. There are scales on the rope. As long as the rope is lowered, you can roughly know the current flying height.
Now that they are flying above the enemy's head, they definitely cannot use ropes to measure, they can only use visual inspection.
This is also a basic skill for all pilots.
Although it was difficult to see clearly at night, the deputy judged from the bonfire on the ground that their current flight altitude was at least more than 900 feet.
War is the best catalyst for industrial development.
Hot air balloons and grenades are the main contributors to the rapid development of Jin Feng's power, so hot air balloon and grenade technologies are also developing the fastest.
At the beginning, Jin Feng needed to experiment and prepare gunpowder himself, and then handed it over to the death row prisoners to make it.
Later, Wei Laosan rebelled and blew up the gunpowder warehouse with a hot-air balloon, killing almost all the prisoners on death row recruited from Xichuan City.
When rebuilding the gunpowder workshop, Jin Feng arranged for the entire warehouse to use assembly line operations, splitting the process of making gunpowder into several steps, and each workshop was only responsible for the production of one of the raw materials.
After all the raw materials are processed, they are sent to the mixing workshop for the final step of production.
In this way, even if someone rebels again, he will only know a part of the production process, but not the complete process.
And the production speed is many times faster than before.
Gunpowder is a very dangerous thing. Tang Xiaobei was afraid that Jin Feng would be in danger, so he joined forces with Guan Xiaorou to no longer agree to Jin Feng's continued experiment with gunpowder.
To this end, Tang Xiaobei also spent a lot of money to recruit a group of people and set up an explosives laboratory in the old woods of the back mountain specifically for testing gunpowder.
Jin Feng was so troubled by them that he had no choice but to agree to hand over the job to someone recruited by Tang Xiaobei.
For these people, Jin Feng didn't have much expectations.
In his opinion, these people are almost all extremely poor, so they are willing to risk being killed by bombs to participate in this hard-working job. None of them are literate, let alone the principles of gunpowder, and how can they prepare it?
What new explosives are coming out?
But Jin Feng underestimated the power of money.
When Tang Xiaobei recruited them, he said that whoever could develop a more powerful gunpowder ratio or other methods of making grenades would receive a large reward.
In order to get this reward, these people actually prepared a new explosive in the third month after the establishment of the laboratory.
Although the power is not much higher than Jin Feng's previous proportioning method, it shows that these people have really understood the principles of gunpowder.
Jin Feng himself was not very interested in explosives, so he simply stopped caring about them.
He believed that with Tang Xiaobei's level of caution, there was no need to worry about these people leaking secrets.
As for how Tang Xiaobei formulated the confidentiality process, Jin Feng didn't bother to ask.
The same goes for the hot air balloon workshop. Jin Feng no longer needs to take care of it now. There is a dedicated person in charge.
Facts have proven that once the seeds of knowledge are sown, they will thrive.
Although Jin Feng rarely asked about hot air balloons, due to war needs, Zhang Liang attached great importance to hot air balloons before the advent of airships.
After such a long period of development, Xihewan’s hot air balloon production technology has become very mature.
The Eagles and others first experimented with hot air balloons, and the maximum height was only three hundred feet, and then gradually began to rise to four hundred feet, and five hundred feet.
Up to now, the hot air balloons produced by Xihewan can fly up to 1,000 feet.
In fact, if you really want to fly upward, the hot air balloon can still fly, but once it reaches an altitude of several thousand meters, not only will the temperature drop rapidly, but the oxygen content in the air will also drop rapidly.
At that time, the pilot will suffer from hypoxia syndrome.
In order to prevent pilots from accidents, Jin Feng issued an order to the flying team, stipulating that except for experiments, hot air balloons could only fly up to a thousand feet. If anyone flew any higher, they would be disqualified from flying.
Even if there is a test, it must be reported.
The current flying height of this hot air balloon is probably more than 1,000 feet.
Finding that the main controller was still flying upward, the deputy hesitated for a moment, and then reminded: "Brother Wen, we are flying too high, it seems to be more than a thousand feet... The teacher said that we can't fly that high...
"
But before he finished speaking, he was interrupted by the master controller: "Who said it's a thousand feet, I think it's less than five hundred feet!"
When the deputy heard this, he glanced at the controller speechlessly, but said nothing more.
The master controller poured another ladle of hot oil into the stove, and the hot air balloon rose faster.
As they rose to about 1,500 feet, when both pilots felt a little out of breath, they finally found a suitable wind direction.
The hot air balloon flew unsteadily to the north.
At this time, the master controller finally showed a smile on his face.
When Hai Dongqing attacked the airship, the two of them happened to be taking turns and did not board the airship.
As a result, their companions never came back after that day.
Although the master controller knows that this incident is not his fault, every time in the dead of night, he always thinks of his comrades who trained together and feels like a deserter.
Now, he can finally avenge his comrades!
The hot air balloon was very fast. It flew over Yuguan City again in ten minutes, entered the grassland, and successfully found the camp of the Eastern Barbarians.
But when they arrived above the camp, they were dumbfounded.
The camp of the Eastern Barbarians was too big and it was too dark.
Even with telescopes and a lowered flight altitude, the two pilots still couldn't find where the Eastern Barbarians' main tent was.
Although they can definitely hit the enemy by throwing grenades casually, what's the point of blowing up those soldiers?