From the 4 cameras we were using over the week, we ended up with over 100gb of video. Here is the final compilation of the video. Note: The music might stop it from being viewed in some countries or devices.

I am currently sitting at my sister’s place in Salt Spring Island in British Columbia (Canada) a few days after the event, reflecting on it all. As you can imagine, the last few days of the competition became very busy and we were all walking zombies by the end of it all.

First let me tell you about the last couple of days, then I will go into some of my overall thoughts.

We had two more flights after my last post. Thursday afternoon was a bit of a tragedy. It was two pilot declared goals, and we hedged our bets on the wind backing before sunset. Unfortunately (even though our pibals showed it was) it didn’t and we completely missed both goals. So we only ended up with about 650 points in total for those tasks.

Thursday Afternoon

Friday morning was the last competition flight. We went to the briefing expecting them to can the flight because there were fast winds at just a few hundred feet. However the weather guy predicted a strong, thin inversion layer and David Levin called a Fly In and two Hesitation Waltzes. This was a fun flight, because we ended up doing about 35km at about 300 feet, but in the bottom layer it was completely still. On the first goal, my 7m result on got me 500 points. On the second I did a week throw and got about 10 metres, which only gave me 400 points. On the last target, the ground wind shifted and screwed a lot of the field (self-included) and I missed the target by 170 metres (370 points).

Friday Morning

So with very average results, I knew I was going to slide down the rankings significantly.

With the flying over, we spent the rest of Friday emptying and purging tanks, cleaning the gear for Australian Quarantine and rebuilding the van. Sean, Deano, Matt and I then headed over to Detroit Airport and packed off the balloons to send home to Australia.

Cleaning and Packing the Gear

Due to a suspension in the scoring times, the final results were not posted until 8am Saturday morning. Just to add some last minute excitement, when I looked at the results I was in 64^th position and they had applied a 500 point penalty to Friday’s flight for Mid Air Collision. I had not touched anyone, so Sean and I charged into the competition centre with our in-flight video to prove our case. After about 20 minutes, the scoring team realised they had given me someone else’s penalty and I got my 500 points back. I ended up moving back up to 55^th position.

Matt ended up in 10^th position. He had a similar morning to me on Friday morning, but still managed to hang in the top 10. This is a great result for Matt considering it is only his 4^th competition that he has flown and many of the tasks (Elbow and Land Run) were tasks he had never flown before.

The final results were as follows:

1 DONNER, Nick  USA  24030
2 PETREHN, Johnny  USA  23423
3 FUJITA, Yudai  JPN  23423
4 DONNER, Chase  USA  22508
5 SCHNEIDER, Uwe  GER  22229
6 SCHWARTZ, Nicolas  FRA  22125
7 BLOOM, Cory  USA  22063
8 LATYPOV, Sergey  RUS  22053
9 ZEBERLI, Stefan  SUI  21852
10 SCAIFE, Matthew  AUS  21849
55 ROBERTSON, Andrew  AUS  15918
87 WRIGHT, Peter  AUS  11001

On Saturday afternoon was the closing ceremony. Unfortunately Matt, who never imagined he would do so well, had to head over to Chicago before it started, so I had to get up on to stage with the top 10 as his proxy. So we managed to get to wave the Australian flag for the first time since 2004.

The Top Ten

So then it was all over as fast as it started. There were plenty of highlights of the week and a couple of learnings (lowlights). Here is a brief overview of them:

Highlights:

1. The three Australian teams worked really well together as an Australian Team. Getting together at the start of the week and discussing how we would work together and being completely open with everyone was incredibly valuable. At no point was there tension or problems. Having spent the weekend in Canowindra together also helped us all work out how each other operated and flew.
2. Team Robbo worked really well together. Everyone got on really well and whilst we were exhausted by the end of the week, spirits were high and everyone had a good time.
3. I won a task. This was one of my big goals for the week. My 15 minutes of glory. Not only that, I also had 4 tasks in the 900s. This might not sound like much, but considering the calibre of the competitors, I am pretty proud of this. Considering there were tasks that 4 metre results would only give you 500 points.
4. All our planning for tasks was spot on (except for Thursday night). We went into the flights having made the right decisions and all our launch sites and pilot declared goals were spot the right ones. This is so important because setting up a flight correctly means you can just focus on flying the plan rather than fighting your way back or changing things mid-flight.
5. Logistically everything worked. Logistics can be a nightmare for an event like this. Getting the gear over there and getting gear organised when you arrive can be pretty stressful. Being organised early was such a big factor in this. I knew that I would be flat out with work before the event, so having most of the stuff organised a month out paid off.
6. James did really well. A week of little sleep and sporadic eating is tough on an adult, let alone a 9 year old. He did not complain all week and had a lot of fun. The entire team was very proud of him and enjoyed having him around.
7. We had a lot of fun. The team dynamic was so good that it allowed us to be serious when required but have some fun for the rest of the time.

Learnings:

1. I didn’t make it into the top half of the field. Now that the event is over, I can share my goals :-). The dream was top 20, but the realistic goal was to be in the top half (top 50). So I was only a bit short of this, but I am not too worried about it. Considering the amount of flying others do and the lack of I flying I do, I am pretty happy. There are some pretty significant names below me in the list (including past World Champions) so I have to be happy about.
2. I really need to work on my final 50 metres when approaching targets. Probably half my results could have been better if I had either come down lower, picked the ground wind better or made a better throw. In competitions in Australia, a result under 10 metres will normally get you 800 plus points. At a Worlds, it will only get you 400 points. You need to be consistently sub 2 metres.  This has to become the focus of my training now. I have proven I can get near a target consistently, now I need to focus on the final approach.

One of the big things that came out of the week was that the entire team agreed we need to do more competition training. We all agreed that we are able to get in and compete against the best of the World, but we just don’t get enough practice in Australia. The grand plan is that we are going to organise half a dozen weekends over the course of the year where we run competition weekends (similar to what we did at Canowindra). If we want to be competitive on the World stage, then we need more competition practice.

There you go. That was the 2012 FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championships. Now it is time to spend the rest of the week catching up on sleep and eating in Canada.

You probably have noticed the lack of posts to the blog. We are getting to the end of the competition and are all getting pretty exhausted. So down time between flights has become a process of self-conservation, trying to get some sleep or food.

The weather has been amazing, so we have flown every morning and afternoon. The morning flights have been really long and hard work. Most of the flights have involved flying up to above 6000ft at high speed and then bombing into targets at crazy speeds. This sort of flying not only drains the fuel in the balloon very quickly, it also drains you mentally.

Flying the tanks dry

I am not going to bother posting how each of the tasks have gone. My results have been a combination of really good and really average. At the time of writing I am sitting in 39^th position but the scores are really close between 25 and 50, so there will be lots of movement in the next 24 hours.

Matt Scaife is still doing well. He dropped out of 1^st position into 5^th position. So we are hoping he can keep in that top pack.

Spirits in the team are really high. Everyone is having a great time and the whole team has been getting on so well.

There are only 2 more flights left in the competition (tonight and tomorrow morning). Rumours are that the weather guy thinks that the weather may not be suitable for tomorrow morning.

After tomorrow morning’s flight (if we get it), the logistics start again. We need to clean the basket and gear (so it gets past Australian quarantine), burn out and purge the tanks, then head over to Detroit to drop it off at the freight depot. We will then have Saturday to sleep in, rebuild the van (replace all the seats and carpet), go to the awards brunch and relax in the afternoon. Sean is flying out from Detroit tomorrow night, so he will be able to drop the van off in Detroit.

Video from the CRAT the other day…

This morning was the first competition flight of the championship. At the morning briefing David Levin called 3 tasks; a Hesitation Waltz (where we could pick one of 4 targets to fly to), a Fly On and a 3D shape task (a donut shape).

It was pretty obvious that the winds were going to be all over the place, because the common launch area was in the middle of the 4 hesitation waltz targets, allowing us to fly in any direction (at our discretion). Also, with the Fly On and the pilot declared 3D task, the task sheet really read like they were sending us out there to work it out for ourselves.

We headed out to a common launch area to the North of town. The team communication broke down a little bit and Matt ended up at the other end of the field from Pete and I. So Pete and I worked on the planning for the flight.

I made the decision to take off early because I thought we would start losing the right had turn that we had in the bottom 1000ft. This paid off because the wind did shift and also there was a lot of congestion in the rest of the pack. I know Matt didn’t particularly enjoy the flight because of the way some pilots were flying around him.

Above the launch site

When I took off I quickly realised I was not going to be able to the HWZ target that I planning to get to, so I changed to one that was more to the South. This meant that I was going to get a less desirable result for my Donut, because I would have to fly through the centre ring (which gives you no track points) to get to my Fly On.

The first target was just over a kilometre away from the launch site, so there was little time to muck about. There was a lot of steerage between 1000-2000ft and I managed to make my way to the target. I ended up having to make a high gravity marker drop (from about 1000 feet) using my clinometer and ended up with a 10.88m result. At the time of writing this looks like it was the 27th best result and should get me just over 800 points (out of 1000) which is not too bad for a first task.

Task 1 – High gravity marker drop using clinometer

The second task (Fly On) was better. I chose pretty much the only intersection that was achievable (as did most of the other 100 balloons). I had a great approach to the intersection, but unfortunately one of the Japanese pilots was below me and rocketed up under me, so I had to focus on getting out of his way rather than my throw. If you watch this video, you will see me using the double burners and throwing my marker all at once.

Task 2 – Getting blocked by an ascending Japanese balloon at the Fly On

Video: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150985352977085

The 3D donut task was a bit of a stuff up. I stupidly did not go up to 6000 feet or talk to Matt and Pete enough to find out what they had at that height. If I had I would have found out that if I went up high, I would be able to head back into the donut and get more points.

One of the interesting (not in a good way) about this morning was it was one of the first times when I have felt completely disoriented. Even standing on the launch site watching pibals, I was mentally about 90 degrees out. Even during the flight I just could get my mind around if I needed left or right. By the end of the flight I got my brain around it but it did suck at the time second guessing.

We had a short debrief with Pete, Matt, Sean and I, and sorted out the few things we did wrong. We had been working well during practice, but I think a bit of first flight jitters got to us all and now we can settle down and get into the swing of things.

You can keep an eye on the results here: http://www.balloonworlds2012.com/index.php/official-notice-board/results

Today was the last day of practice. Tomorrow the competition begins.

The weather this morning was fantastic for flying. It was much cooler than it has been all week and the winds were light and waffly. Championship Director, David Levin, declared 3 practice tasks. A Fly In, a Fly On and a 3D Shape (wedding cake).

The 3 teams worked really well together this morning. After we had all agreed on how we would communicate and operate on the ground, everything worked like clockwork. We were one of the first teams to find the best launch sites (all ways good seeing 30 or so balloons follow you into the spot you pick). Pete, Matt and I also were communicating and helping each other out over the radios really effectively.

Our launch site became pretty popular

I flew the first task really well. I was really low over the centre of the target but screwed up my gravity marker throw. I think I got so excited I was dead centre over the cross that my brain malfunctioned and I ended up dropping just outside of the arms of the cross. To make me feel worse, the Luxemburg pilot next to me, who had flown exactly the same flight as me, nailed the centre of the cross. Lesson learnt… don’t muck up 30 minutes of good hard work in the last 2 seconds by being an idiot.

Balloons approaching the Fly In task

The Fly On was crap. As the morning warmed up we lost all the left turn we had been banking on. So being a practice flight I then focused on setting an appropriate 3D shape. I changed my declaration of the shape about 4 times in the space of 10 minutes because the wind was changing so much. This was not helped with the fact I was having slight software issues with my computer. In the end my final declaration was a good one and I started working on the 3D shape. Basically you need to fly the longest track within a virtual 3D series of cylinders stacked up on each other (shaped like a wedding cake). I was flying the shape really well, but ahead I could see I was heading towards a big lake and the centre of town. If it was a competition flight I would have continued but it wasn’t worth the stress on a practice flight, so I landed early and was content with how I had planned that task.

The afternoon was spent at the Master Briefing. This is the official start of the competition where they take the official role call and then explain the rules and operations of the event. It was one of the quickest master briefings I have been too (which is good) and not too many dumb questions.

Finally tonight we had the Opening Ceremony at the Kellogg’s Arena. It had everything from speeches, anthems, dancing girls, and even trapeze artists. It was a great night. The highlight was when some of the Great Brits started attaching the balloons from the table decorations to our Boxing Kangaroo to try and make it fly. Before we know it, all the teams from around the room started bringing their balloons over and getting their photos taken. The roo was getting close to equilibrium when we left but I think it was a little heavy.

The (nearly) flying kangaroo

So tomorrow the competition begins. I think the team is all now ready to get into it. The couple of practice flights have proven that we have worked out how to fly in the area. So hopefully once it all starts we can continue with our good form and stop making the little mistakes that will cost us points.

My blog posts may get a little shorter over the next few weeks, because it is going to get busy and no doubt the focus will be on eating and sleeping (and Facebooking) when we have any down time.

This morning I staggered out the hotel into the darkness to be greeted by stars and no wind. Finally we would be able to fly.

We headed into town and showed up to the first official practice flight briefing. David Levin, the Championship Director, set a simple task of a Fly In and a Fly On. The Fly In meant we had to find our own launch site and fly to a target they had set in a field. The Fly On meant we had to declare an intersection of our own choice and fly to that.

The Aussie team headed out to the north of Battle Creek to try and find a decent launch site amongst all the woodland. While we were on the side of the road working out who’s farm we would as permission to launch from, Steve, the Land Owner Relation officer for the event pulled up and asked if we wanted to fly from the property we were parked out. It just happened to be his mum’s place and he led us into the back of their property to a perfect launch site.

We quickly inflated the balloons (the first time Matt had seen his new balloon) and I headed off first. It was the first time I had flown in Battle Creek and it was pretty exciting to get up and see the area from the air.

We were to the North West of the target and were reliant on the ground winds to get us over to the target. When I got into the air I could see a line of the Team USA balloons coming in from the North in the higher winds. Matt, Pete and I flew in from the side and placed ourselves in the middle of the US queue.

I ended up flying right next to Nick Donner from the US for the rest of the flight. We both approached the first target next to each other. It was a great feeling to actually get to the target on my first practice flight in the new area. Unfortunately I did a pretty week throw of the marker and it landed about 7m from the centre of the cross. It should have been closer, but I now realise I have a tendency to under throw. Matt absolutely nailed the first cross, throwing onto the centre square of the target (so well under a metre).

Photo pinched from Brad Temeyer via Facebook

We then headed down to a highly wooded intersection for our Fly On. I ended up coming in a bit high and had to rely on a clinometer drop from a couple of hundred feet at speed. Once again the trust clino served me well and the marked landed about 7m from the intersection.

After about 50 minutes I saw I was headed towards a long line of woods. As I was I approaching the woods, I flew over a field that had a friendly farmer waving in it and I decided that I should call it quits and landed in the field.

I have to say, we have met a lot of really friendly and helpful locals. This farm was very much one of them. He was a little concerned we might bog our van in the field because it was slippery and hilly. So as we were leaving he appeared with his tractor just in case we got bogged. We didn’t, but it was a kind gesture all the same.

At lunch time the Aussie Team all sat down and had a team meeting. It was a chance for us to all discuss and agree on how we would work together on the ground pre flight and how we would communicate in the air. It was a really productive session and I think that it really showed that the whole team works really well together. Hopefully that will bring us all up the field during the next week.

The day was ended with the balloonpong.com party at one of the local bars. The turn out was fantastic and it was great way to catch up with all the people we had not seen for years (but spend a lot of time Facebooking).

The weather looks like it is going to be good for another practice flight in the morning. We have the Master Briefing in the afternoon. That is then followed by the opening ceremony. We don’t know what the ceremony will entail but they are going to be live streaming it from 7pm Eastern US time…

http://www.zoovision.com/worldballoonchampionship/

Oh BTW, please ignore any typos, spelling and grammar in this blog. I am always writing it in bed when I am trashed and about to go to sleep… so I really can’t be bothered proof reading it. I just want to sleep… good night.

We just had another day of not flying. The weather set in overnight and wrote off any hopes of ballooning.

There was a vague hope of flying this morning, so we met up with Team USA just before 6am but the pre-frontal winds picked up and it was game over. By lunchtime it was pissing with rain and it ended up being another day of cruising the shopping malls, buying bits and pieces.

The front moved through pretty quickly but has left us with some heavy wind and rain. As I am typing this (before crashing for the night) the radar is showing scattered light showers. It should clear by morning, so the only question should be if the wind will drop.

Current radar

We did have to register for the event this afternoon. That involved standing in a queue of pilots for 45 minutes (flashbacks of Disneyland) and then the spend 5 minutes showing all your paper work to prove you are who you say you are, that you are a pilot and that your balloon is legitimate. There is always a few nerve-racking moments in that queue where your gut tells you that you have forgotten some piece of paperwork, even though you know you have checked numerous times. Fortunately it was all in order and now we can compete.

It hasn’t been such clear sailing for the Japanese Team. They have an issue that their ballooning federation is not recognized by the Japanese aviation authority, hence it is not recognized by the rest of the World. The US FAA decided a couple of weeks ago that the Japanese pilots did not have legitimate licences and their balloons were not certified to fly in the US.

Fortunately Team USA found a solution, where they bought all of the Japanese pilot’s balloons (for a couple of dollars) so they could get them certified and registered as US aircraft. Then they got the Japanese pilots to get their US student licences which allows them to fly solo in an US aircraft. So the FAA were inspecting their balloons this morning and when I last saw them this afternoon, the US registration certificates were starting to be issued.

Kath’s Aunt Liz and Uncle John came down from Canada today to join us for a couple of days. Kath has not seen them for about 20 years. So it was nice to catch up with them and have dinner. We found another nice restaurant in the center of town. Once again we got beaten by the massive size of the US servicing. Sean and I shared a massive Taco pizza that could have fed the entire table. Short of turning this into a food blog, here is my daily food photo.

Token Food Photo – Taco Pizza

So hopefully we will get a flight in the morning. It is the first official practice flight, so we have to meet at 6am for a practice briefing. This will give the officials a chance to practice running some tasks and a chance for the pilots to practice flying some.

Well that was a big day. After a sleepless night of thinking about all the things that I needed to get done, Rob and I jumped in my temporary hire car and headed over to Detroit (about 1.5 hours from Battle Creek). First stop was to pick up Sean and Deano, who flew in last night, from their airport hotel.

With the team together, we drove down the road to the car hire depot, dreading having to deal with the van issue (covered in my previous post). When we got to the hire place, we were pleasantly surprised to have a very helpful girl that told us they were not allowed to remove the seats from the van, but she showed us how too should we want to do it once we were out of sight. The van is massive, it is normally a 15 seater but after removing 2 rows of seats we are able to fit the balloon and still have room for 8 people.

The Big White Whale… needs some pimping

So with the van picked up we headed further down the road to the freight company to pick up the balloon. We were greater by a lovely, friendly girl (Pam) who kindly and sweetly informed us that the balloon had not cleared customs yet and could take between 24-48 hours! On saying that, I think she must have been completely surprised by the look of horror on our faces. She promptly told us to give her some time and she would see if she could convince them to do it faster. So we headed off to do some shopping in Super Kmart and waited for her call. Pam rang us back and told us that it was going to be done in 3 hours, so we decided to hang out in the back streets of Detroit and wait.

During this time, we embarked on removing the back 2 rows of seats from the van. After a couple of hours running around to get the right tools to properly set up the back of the van, we got a call to say that the balloon had cleared customs. The wait ended up being a blessing in disguise because we would not have been able to get the balloon into the van without those couple of hours of rearranging things in it.

Sean and Deano being proud of getting a square peg into a not so square hole

Once the balloon was picked up we headed back to Battle Creek and unpacked the balloon so we could get the tanks out to get filled. By the time we had done this and got down to the gas depot it was 6pm. We then found that the gas depot shut at 5pm. Personally I think it is crazy that 3 days before the Worlds begin, when people are arriving in town with empty tanks or doing practice flights, that you cannot refuel after 5pm. Anyway, we made some calls and found out there was a hardware store across town that sold propane. Luckily they were open until 7pm, but unfortunately they were pretty expensive (by US standards but were about on par with what we pay back home).

Exhausted but satisfied that everything was organised (apart from a few odds and ends), we found a really nice Sushi restaurant and were suitably impressed with how good the food and service was. Always good to find a decent eating spot early on.

Certainly did not expect to get good Japanese in Battle Creek… very happy team

We are hoping get a flight in in the morning. They are forecasting thunderstorms and rain, but hopefully we will be able to squeeze something in. We are meeting up with some of the American team (so I can bludge a fan off them). Matt ran out of time to get fuel, so he is going to come for a flight with me so we can both get our bearings.

So with the logistics behind us, we can now focus on the flying.

Fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow.