Results thru task 3

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

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

Videos from task 3

Courtesy of Shawn Raya (2006 Michigan Hot Air Balloon Champion), here are a couple clips of drops by Nick Donner, Johnny Petrehn and Joe Heartsill at task 3 from this morning:
Nick Donner
Johnny Petrehn / Joe Heartsill

They're a little big, so you might have to give them some time to load.

Flight cancelled

Rain moved into the area this afternoon, so this evening's flight was cancelled. The forecast for the morning doesn't look good, and tomorrow evening may be questionable as well.

There's another party tonight.

Still no results from this morning...

First morning

We just got back from the morning flight, the first competitive one of the Championships:

• Task 1: PDG
• Task 2: FIT (single judge-declared goal)
• Task 3: FON (single pilot-declared goal)

The winds weren't especially fast or slow, maybe 10mph at a couple hundred feet. All four Americans were among the first in the air, and flew together for most of the flight. It's always hard to guess how you've done relative to everyone else, but among the US team there were a few drops inside .5 meters, and many within 10 meters. I think everyone will be end up positioned very well when the results are posted.

We've got a pretty good system going here with the 2 chase vehicles. Shawn and I were at the first target before Paul had even selected a launch site. As soon as he inflated, we were feeding him details about the winds and surroundings. Once Joe and Erica got there with the observer, Shawn and I left and went to the 2nd target. We kept "hopping" targets like this, so that he always had someone at both the current target he was working AND the one after that.

It's also cool because both vehicles have laptops connected to GPS's with moving maps (using CompeGPS), so our paper maps aren't really even used. Note to Derrick and John: For the Holiday Balloon Fest, we're now expecting high-resolution JPEG scans of the competition map with CompeGPS calibration files and a CompeGPS waypoint file.

We've also got Al Nels here as the team manager. He's out at targets gathering pibal windreader data while everyone is in flight and giving them the results. Al's done a TREMENDOUS amount of work preparing for the event, and is an absolutely invaluable resource out in the field. I can all but guarantee that no other country here has a 2-time world champion helping out on the ground.

We've got about 2 hours before we need to head out for the evening briefing. It's sprinkling rain right now, so we'll see what happens.

I'm assuming that they'll post the results on the event's official website: http://www.balloon2006worlds.com/index-e1.html

If you've got questions or comments, just feel free to e-mail me.

The official start

Last night was the official opening ceremony:

It was translated into both English and Japanese. Then there was an opening party, after which we all came back to the hotel and went to bed. This morning is the first competition flight.

In about an hour the Ohio State/Michigan game starts. We'll have to get the final score off the Internet, as it certainly won't be on TV or radio here, and takes place at exactly the same time as our morning flight (3:30pm Saturday in Ohio = 5:30am Sunday here).

Sunset here is at 4:30pm, so the afternoon briefing is at 2:00pm. With 4-5 part flights and observers, I'm not sure that I'll be able to make a post in between.