He has altitude control over his hot air balloon and responds to changes as he experiences them.

I watched a hot air balloon descend over my neighborhood last summer. He was shooting for a ball field half a block from the house. It took over half an hour, ascending and descending, before he could make the landing and even then got in the wrong corner of the field (landed in a patch of goatsheads. Very nasty stuff.)

In general terms, it's possible to know approximately where the wind will take you in a hot air balloon. One of the skills in flying a hot air balloon, much like sailing, is being able to "read" changing conditions and using altitude adjustment to pick the right layer. How would that apply to model rockets?