Friday, September 19, 2008

Final results?

The standings for all tasks (1-14) are posted here.

However, there will be some minor changes. Paul is only 15 points from a podium finish. It's fully possible that even minor modifications to the scores of those below him could change things enough to get those...

Live from the Afternoon Briefing

Two tasks indicated on the task sheet: a fly-in with 2 goals and a hesitation waltz with 4 goals. Launch site is competitor's choice, and both are free marker drops. 1 km minimum distance on the fly-in.

However, after the weather briefing David Levin indicated that the winds were too high, so the flight was canceled. With "increasing wind speeds during a cloudy night with gusty winds in the morning and during the whole day" it appears that the competition might be over. Based on this morning's task results posted on the event's website we may have gained some spots. The overall standings haven't been updated yet, but given that we now have some free time this evening perhaps we'll run those numbers ourselves.

International Superstar

I'm pretty sure that I heard him say "If you ain't first, you're last."

Worlds, Day 6

First, my apologies for only posting once yesterday. After a long 3-task evening flight (which didn't go particularly well) we had to wait well over an hour for propane. By then everyone was ready for food and some sleep. Sorry, no action photos.

Another chilly 4-task flight this morning: PDG (3 possible goals), HWZ (2 possible goals), MXDD (with limited scoring) and an elbow. Tasks sheets, results, and other "official" details are on the event's website.

Paul said he did pretty well on the first 2 tasks (the photos below say Joe Zvada did as well).

(Photos courtesy of Larry Coan)

Shifting winds made getting to the MXDD difficult, but a very low level (under 200' AGL) box developed that allowed about 20 pilots to make low, slow, precise approaches.


Al Nels was the only member of Team USA to score on that task.


The final task, an elbow, had most balloons flying very low and slow over Kaindorf.


Although Paul wasn't able to make the field for the MXDD, he did achieve measured results on the first 2 tasks and was able to create a 180 degree (or very close to it) angle for the elbow. Hopefully that will move him up a little from his pre-flight position of 21st place.

While I don't have any ballooning photos to post from last night, I did get some shots of the highly-customized Team Zvada Racing recovery vehicle (despite Joe's brother Luke standing/sitting guard).


And here's some photos of our team managers (Andy Baird, John Gibbons, and Derrick Jones):

(Photos courtesy of Derrick Jones)

The weather is very nice right now, but the forecast has wind and rain moving in tomorrow morning. We'll be back out tonight for a 4:00pm briefing, and hopefully things will hold off long enough for another 4-5 part flight tomorrow morning.