Tasks 6 and 7

This evening we went to the flat lands of Haga Town for a FIT (judge declared goal) and a FOT (pilot declared goal). It was a typical evening flight, with winds that kept shifting right, and going from calm to gusty. Lots of people launched too far to the right, and had to go racer-ballistic to get near the target. A recovery was especially important for them, as those pilots most likely changed their provisional goals. The Americans did fairly well overall, with Paul having a 131m drop. It won't win the task, but it certainly won't be last.

As with most PDG's, it's hard to say how his 95m drop for the next task will hold up. We know that some missed big time, but others (including Nick Donner) greased the target.

With the changing winds, Shawn and I let off about 2 dozen pibals at the fly-in trying to get a grasp on the situation. I did snap off a couple photos of Johnny and Joe after they crossed the first target and passed over us:


My feeling on evening flights is similar to my theory on proximal GPS scoring tasks. It's uncommon to gain points, but easy to lose them. That's not to say that either are bad or shouldn't be done, it's just the nature of the game. I feel like we held position tonight, which by-and-large is all you can ask for.

Thanks to everyone for sending in all the nice comments about my posts. It's weird because I feel like such a tourist for snapping off pictures of balloons. Tomorrow morning we have to check out of our hotel here in Motegi for a couple days, as Honda is hosting their "Thanks Day". In fact, the whole event is moving and hour west to Utsunomiya for the Thursday flights. We'll be back in Motegi for Friday and Saturday. Tomorrow will be hectic with flights and moving and all, but I'll try to squeeze updates in. The new hotel has Internet access, and everyone (especially Maury) is excited that there's a KFC and McDonalds right next door.

4-5 baggies in the morning would be nice.

Results thru task 5

Here are the top 10 after tasks 1-5:
1 HEARTSILL, Joe USA
2 DONNER, Nick USA
3 PRAWICKI, Bogdan POL
4 DANKERL, Peter GER
5 MESSINES, Francois FRA
6 PETREHN, Paul USA
7 HOWARD, Mike GBR
8 PETREHN, John USA
9 WILLIAMS, Crispin GBR
10 BOLZE, Stephane FRA

For complete results: http://www.balloon2006worlds.com/results/HABWC06index.html

Like I said below, this was a weird morning. Out of 62 pilots, Paul had a 33rd (task 4) and a 20th (task 5), but moved up 3 spots to 6th.

Tasks 4 and 5

Two tasks this morning: a hesitation waltz (MJDG - multiple judge declared goal) and a fly-on (PDG - pilot declared goal). It was the first competition flight in the hills and valleys of the Motegi area.

The morning flights here use a common launch site. I suppose that because we're in a more mountainous region, it might be hard to find individual launch sites:


There were 2 targets to pick from on the first task. Most tried for the eastern-most one, but apparently a few went for the west. Of those at the east (where we were), the first balloons there flew high across the target, but the left to get there faded, and most of the pack seemed to struggle to get within a few hundred meters. Paul was about 650m, so we'll see how that plays out. Everyone was changing their provisional on that marker, so a retrieve was especially important. Word is that there were some pretty wild rotors coming off the hills.

The second part was a straightforward pilot-declared fly on. Everyone scattered around the map, so it's hard to get a feel for how we did relative to the group as a whole. However, Paul was 12m, and at least 2 of the other Americans were in the 3-5m range.

This is one of those mornings when you really don't have a good feel for where you'll end up. No one yet has seemed really excited, so we'll just have to wait.

Here's a screenshot from one of the chase laptops this morning:

The blue circles are the 1000-meter minimums from the 2 hesitation waltz goals (which we called "C" and "D"). The red triangle is the chase vehicle at that moment the screenshot was taken, and the red trail behind it is it's track.

Tonight looks good for another flight. We're back out to the flatlands west of Motegi.

Balloonists: Want to know more detail than what I'm posting? Just e-mail me.

Maybe

We're up for the Tuesday morning flight now, and things look more promising. Fog might be an issue, but we can see stars above, and it doesn't look like it's raining.

Let's hope for a pile of baggies when we get to the briefing...