As the proportions finally adopted for the "Brazil" were 113 cubic metres (4104 cubic feet), corresponding to about 113 square metres (135 square yards) of silk surface, the whole envelope weighed scarcely 3-1/2 kilogrammes (less than 8 lbs.). But the weight of the varnish, three coats, brought it up to 14 kilogrammes (about 31 lbs.). The net, which often weighs into the hundreds of lbs., weighed 1800 grammes, or nearly 4 lbs. The basket, which usually weighs 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.) at a minimum, weighed 6 kilogrammes (13 lbs.); the basket which I now have with my little "No. 9" weighs less than 5 kilogrammes (11 lbs.). My guide rope, small, but very long--100 yards--weighed at most 8 kilogrammes (17-1/2 lbs.); its length gave the "Brazil" a good spring. Instead of an anchor I put in a little grappling-iron of 3 kilogrammes (6-1/2 lbs.).
Making everything light in this way I found that, in spite of the smallness of the balloon, it would have ascensional force to take up my own weight of 50 kilogrammes (110 lbs.) and 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.) of ballast. As a fact, I took up that amount on my first trip. On another occasion, when a French Cabinet Minister was present, anxious to see the smallest spherical balloon ever made, I had practically no ballast at all, only 4 or 5 kilogrammes (10 or 11 lbs.). Nevertheless, causing the balloon to be weighed, I went up, and made a good ascent.
The "Brazil" was very handy in the air--easy to control. It was easy to pack also on descending, and the story that I carried it in a valise is true.
Before starting out in my little "Brazil" I made from twenty-five to thirty ascents in ordinary spherical balloons, quite alone, as my own captain and sole passenger. M. Lachambre had many public ascents, and allowed me to do some of them for him. Thus I made ascents in many parts of France and Belgium. As I got the pleasure and the experience, and as I saved him the labour and paid all my own expenses and damages, it was a mutually advantageous arrangement.
I do not believe that, without such previous study and experience with a spherical balloon, a man can be capable of succeeding with an elongated dirigible balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium, to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip.