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2009 United
States National
Hot Air
Balloon Championships
Daily Updates.
 Well here we go
again, Working on my maps and making sure all of my GPS's are in
the right format. Finding targets and copying the maps over on the
laptop. It is Sunday here as I write this. Today is Packing
Day. I have fired up the checklist on my laptop we used earlier
this month for the Classic and will be loading the truck for an early
departure tomorrow morning. We will write more later.
JT
Well our first
day on the road went well. For the most part anyway. I made
a call to Dave Sullivan to let him know we would be at his house to pick
up the balloon I was going to borrow about 1 o'clock. Notice I
said WAS, Dave had it and he was in Mississippi. Opps,
He has been running so fast and hard lately he actually thought it was
going to be next week and not this week. SO, no Coolio. Dave
offered to let me have "Check Ride". That is his 90. This is
the same balloon I flew in Anderson in 06 so not a problem at all.
We stopped
 and
picked up the envelop and then hit the road again. We will have to
sort out the insurance and aircraft paperwork later. Here is a
photo of "Check Ride"
We kept on going
and it is now about 7:30 in the evening on Monday. We made good
time and the only traffic we ran into was in Nashville but we did go
thru between 5 and 6 in the evening rush our. We will get a good
nights sleep here and get into Battle Creek in the early afternoon
tomorrow. O btw, Kim is out somewhere on his bicycle exploring
right now. more tomorrow.
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Bowling Green! |
Jeff
 More tomorrow.
We finished the
trip into battle creek with no troubles at all. Kim and I took
turns driving and it was a very smooth trip. We checked into our
hotel and then found a place to eat and went to bed.
Wednesday AM
Well I got up as
I normally do. Went down to the lobby and there they were, Jule
and Hailey. Hailey was watching the clock and telling her mother
"I just know he is up"! Yes Hailey dear I was up.
We have rain!
Lots of rain, We are not going to fly but Mother Father Kim and I
are going to go to the pilot meeting anyway. Jule and Hailey
joined us but Hailey went back to the hotel with Grampa to get some
sleep. Jule and Hailey were up all night driving here and more or
less stayed in the truck in the parking area last night.
 As we figured no
flying but we took the time to get some map work done. I have been
working on the maps on the way up here.
I have been taking the competition map and putting it into my laptop map
program every chance I had on the way up. I had been marking the
PZ's (no fly and no land zones). But now we needed targets.
When you are flying and need to pick targets it is hard to do the
coordinate calculations while flying. Better to have them done
already. Kim, Jule, Hailey, Dad Mom and I spent from 8 in the
morning till nearly noon doing targets on the map. We were able to
use the overhead computer projector to help speed up the process and
were able to mark three sets of maps at the same time. Great help.
Sure hope the wind direction is headed where we are putting targets.
Back to the
hotel to sort my balloon switch. Now that I am flying a different
balloon I need the airworthiness certificates, registration and
insurance for the balloon. As Dave Sullivan promised the paperwork
was here at the front desk waiting for me but I still need to get the
insurance worked out. Fortunately the insurance paperwork showed
that I was listed for all of Dave's balloons and I was able to print a
copy off of my laptop at the front desk here at the hotel. So I am
ready to go to registration and just in time because it is TIME..
Registration
went well. All kinds of goodies and things to do now. I need
to find Kim, He is off on his bicycle
 somewhere!!!
We have banners to put on the basket and decals to go on the truck.
We have paperwork to get into the basket and we have more map work to do
before tonight.
Before we knew what had happened to the time is was time for the general
briefing. This is where they introduce all of the officials and go
thru all of the rules for the event. The meeting went real long
because of all the rule changes.
Wed PM Flight
Looks like we are going to cancel tonight. We have a long line of
rain on the radar and it does not look like it will clear. We will
have no flight tonight. So more map work ahead!
Thursday AM
Once again a frontal boundary that was supposed to move south has
stopped and backed up. We have rain showers all around the area
and the flight has been cancelled. Hope tonight is good.
Thursday PM.
Ok Game on! There is still a bunch of rain around the area but it
is light and falling apart. We might just get a flight in tonight.
TASK SHEET
Yepper. Game on.
We have a FIN and a FON. Fly in Task
and a Fly On Task. The FIN (fly in task) will be a target out in a
field that the judges have chosen and given us the coordinates for.
We must choose a launch site that we believe will allow us to fly to the
target. This will also be a gravity drop.
This is where you must lay the weighted end of your marker over the side
of the basket and hold onto only the tail. Your hands must remain
inside of the basket and all you can do is let go of the marker and let
it drop. This means it is real
 important to fly the balloon to the
target. The FON (fly on target) will be done by choosing two
targets of your own downwind from the first target and between two
longitude lines selected by the judges. You may choose the targets
before you go out to fly on paper to the judges or you can make that
choice while you are in-flight and write the coordinates on the tail of
your marker when you drop it on the first target. BUT if you miss
the first target and you did not make a target declarations to the
judges before you go out to fly then you will have no second target to
hit at all. Dad and I chose to make our target declarations before
we went out to fly so we would not have to mess around with writing
target numbers on our markers while we were trying to fly to the first
target.
As I came in on the first target I had two balloons
in front of me. One I was sure would clear the target before I got
to it but the other one was right in front of me and below me coming in
from my left. I was real unsure if I could get to the target
before he was under me and would block my view of the target and my line
to be able to drop my marker. This was a gravity drop so normally
I would have to hang onto the tail of the marker and just let it go but
I had Hailey o nboard!
With a racer balloon below me who could begin a climb at any moment and
me in a 90 I simply could not take the chance and take my hands off of
the burner or the vent line, I had Hailey hold the tail of the marker.
I told her I would count down from three... She let the marker go
at just the time I wanted her two and we both watched it fall. It
landed right in the arms of the X. About two feet from the center
of the cross and about 5 feet from the center. That was a great
drop for a gravity marker! Now we had to climb up to get the turn
for our other target. The northern target choice was going to be
real hard to get to but our southern target choice would be fairly easy
to get to so there was no real discussion between dad and I as to what
our choice was going to be. I was in the lead and had my laptop
hooked up to a GPS and was tracking our flight path on my map program.
Man that made things nice to be able to watch the map with a green blip
and know where we were at all times and to see our trail of the flight
path behind us. As I came in on our chosen target I was fairly
blind to the intersection. There were trees on both the north side
of the intersection and on the east side and since I was coming in from
the north east I would not see the intersection till I was right on top
of it. I shot on where I thought
it was and then began an approach. This target was going to be
done with loggers only. No markers to throw so you had to fly the
balloon, again, as close to the target as you could. I started to
turn left too soon and started to climb. My speed was such that I
would climb out of the lower scoring area before I would get to the
target. I gave the balloon a big vent to get back into the primary
scoring altitude and get the best score I could even though that meant
that I would be off to the left of the intersection more than I would
have liked. The scores are in for the first task and we had a 3rd
place finish on the first task! That is a great start. We do
not know about the second task since that is being done all
electronically so we may not know even as late as tonight's flight.
The declaration sheets were up today and I noticed they transposed a
couple of numbers on the sheet on the target I chose. That would end up
giving me a no score so I have made a call to the event director to make
sure they look at that since Dad and I selected the same targets and
they had his correct. Hopefully it is an error on their part and
not one that I made on the declaration sheet!.. We will let you
know.
Friday AM
Flight was cancelled at 4AM I was up and
walking around when Benji Clemmons was putting the notices up on the
hotel doors! No flight! So we will see what tonight turns
out to be. I just found out that the film crew for the documentary
has landed at the airport, I think in Detroit, they said they would be
here in about an hour and a half. Hope the weather lets them see
at least one flight! They will be here for two days.
Tonight's flight looks doubtful. We still have tonight, two
flights on Saturday and a Sunday AM flight for possibilities before this
is over so cross your fingers.
Friday PM
This was a tough call for the balloon meister!
Weather looks poor for the rest of the weekend so the pressure to call a
flight is huge. The rain has tapered off to just a sprinkle and is
expected to go away but the clouds are very low and visibilities are
bad. Right now the overcast layer is about 1000 feet. That
is right at the minimum we need to fly. Some places it gets better
and some places it is worse. The problem is for this national
championships to be valid and to name a champion we must make two
flights and have three tasks! We have made one flight with two
tasks so far. So all we need is one more flight with one task to
be official. We are on hold till 6:30. My personal thought
is that the wind speeds are too slow. The task for tonight is to
go out 3k and fly back to a target. The target closes at 8pm.
By 6:30 we will not have enough time to do that. We will need 45
min to one hour to make that distance when the wind speed is only 3
miles per hour. By the time you leave the briefing and drive to a
launch site you have used up 30 to 40 minutes. So you are looking
to be at a launch site by 7, take ten minutes to put the balloon up and
you now have 50 minutes to get to the target. Also consider that
is from 6:30. You know it will take them about ten minutes to give
us just the updated weather briefing at the 6:30 meeting. My
thoughts are that by putting us on hold till 6:30 we have just
cancelled.
Kim and I have made a bet as to weather or not we
will fly. We both took out a dollar and wrote yes or no on it.
We will see.
NO FLY! Both Kim and I were correct. We
both wrote NO on our dollars.
SCORE UPDATE. Not good news gang. On the
second task on the first flight I apparently transposed two of the
numbers on the declaration sheet. I wrote down 4320 9730 and it
should have been 4320 9370. This put my mark over 2K away from the
intersection I flew over. I finished 52nd out of 54. I will
be going into talk to the scoring team after the flight this morning.
Father and I fly together and we both chose the same targets. We
also wrote down the street names on the declaration sheet and drew a
picture of the intersection. I may be able to get them to forgive
my error on the sheet. The rules say it is the numbers you write
down that are official. So I may just be screwed. I hate that
since it has nothing to do with my flying abilities and after all that
is what we are here for, to find the best pilot in the country
right now. O POO...
It is official, I will not get a score for my run on
the second target even after flying right over it. They
scorekeepers will only use the number and I wrote it down wrong. I
am more or less out of the competition at this point.
Sat AM
 What
an ugly morning. We have over cast conditions and a frontal
boundary north and south of us. This is channeling both moisture
and wind right over our area. The ceilings are 800 feet to 1500
feet in most areas around us. Not even sure if it is legal to fly
in this or not. The FAA is here and will be out in the flying area
all morning. Even if the flight is a go I just can not risk
loosing my
license in this soup! Today they are calling for a JDG then a
hesitation waltz and a pilot declared goal with a maximum distance drop
from the launch site. The winds are forecast to be 14 with gusts
to 18 by 9 am!
More when I can.
We made the decision not to fly, This was a
hard one to make but I believe the right one for our situation.
This pretty much ended our chances at having any good finish in this
years championships. Looking back it WAS a good decision and even
though I was not in the top 20 in the country for the first time in many
years I could hold my head hi since I came out of the gate in the top
five on the first day! See you next year.
Jeff
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