Worlds, Final Day

The final results are in. You can see all the details from the event's website by clicking here. In short, Paul finished in 4th place out of 100 competitors, 11 points (out of 14,000 possible) from third and 231 points from first.

This morning was the awards ceremony.


The top 3 were from (in order) France, Russia, and France.


Joe Zvada finished 6th in his first World Championships:


And of course Paul got a nice trophy for 4th:


For all you aspiring competitors out there, here's a history lesson: a selection of former (and current) World Champions.


Today we'll finish with packing up the equipment. Tomorrow will be an early morning as we drive the 2 hours to Vienna to drop off a 900-pound basket to air cargo and turn in the van. We'll then spend the day seeing Vienna before getting on flights back home Tuesday morning.

We love you Jan:

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

When 15 points separate you from the podium, what do you do? Stand outside the competition center beside the guy that you're chasing (in the blue vest with the logo) waiting for updates:

Worlds, Day 6

Imagine that you are getting ready to fly the last flight of the World Championships and you're within a stone's throw (~250 points) of first place. Wouldn't it be nice to have three former World Champions (and friends) offer to fly pibal for you?

That's what happened this morning in Austria. With a two-task flight called and Paul within 250 points of first place, Al Nels (1987 & 1991 champion), Joe Heartsill (1995 champion), and John Petrehn (2006 champion) all offered to assist. With winds forecasted to be brisker than we've seen all week, teams were sent out for a fly-in and hesitation waltz. At the briefing we were reminded not only of the recall procedures, but that the decision to fly is completely and exclusively that of the pilot. After selecting a launch location, we proceeded to lay out and begin inflation. Joe Heartsill and John Petrehn inflated within 100' and took off (along with about 20 others). Although their ascents were completely under control, others around us proceeded with much less caution.

However, with our balloon stood up and ready, we suddenly heard shouting in various foreign languages. We couldn't understand the words, but the universal sign of crossed-forearms was unmistakable. Immediately we checked the text messages on our cell phone and confirmed the bad news. The flight (and both tasks) had been canceled. Everyone got down okay, but there would be no scoring.

Currently there are a number of outstanding issues with the scores, including one task that's being recalculated completely. Paul has moved from 5th to 4th then back to 5th and now back to 4th in the last 12 hours without a flight being flown. The event has done an outstanding job of keeping the website current, so check there for the latest updates. Joe Zvada, in his rookie year, is locked solidly into the top-10, currently being shown in 6th place.

Funny story of the day: This morning Mike Howard, our friend and fellow competitor from Great Britain who was also battling for the lead, was standing in a field next to us looking at pibals. Suddenly he grabbed the BFA radio from Nick Donner's pocket and, in his "unmistakable" voice, said "Andy Baird, what are the winds at the field doing?" Andy's response: "Sorry, that last transmission broke up."

Right now we're sitting in the event debriefing meeting. It's an open forum where those involved with the event can comment on the competition to those involved in organizing it. Lots of compliments, suggestions, and criticisms are being voiced. However, I'm not going to report on the specifics here.

The awards ceremony will be held tomorrow afternoon, I'll almost certainly have some photos to post from that.

Although a few have left for home already, tonight the approximately 50 members of Team USA are planning on having dinner together at a local restaurant. We've already "disassembled" our retreive vehicles, and tomorrow we'll being readying the balloon equipment for shipping. It will be dropped at air cargo in Vienna on Monday. We plan to spend Monday afternoon and evening seeing the city, then fly ourselves out on Tuesday morning.

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.

Live from the Afternoon Briefing

Task sheet has 3 parts - fly in, hesitation waltz (6 goals), hesitation waltz (same 6 goals as previous ). All free marker drops, pilot selects launch site.

Provisional scores are posted for 4 of the 5 tasks this morning. Paul had 900's on all of them.

Worlds, Day 5

Five tasks, four markers, and 2 hours 45 minutes in the air. Finally a Worlds-type flight.

A five-task flight, light surface winds, and chilly 34 degree temperatures greeted us this morning. The task sheet and CRAT diagram are on the event's website (click here), so I won't go into the technical details. I will say that Paul landed with no markers, timed the CRAT right, and picked up all 3 data points needed for the land run. Most of the other US pilots did the same, although many others missed either one of the hesitation waltz MSA's or didn't cross the powerlines for the land run in time. Perhaps we made up a little ground.

Both of our ground teams were busy this morning, so we didn't get a chance to snap off a lot of photos. Below is the inflation, congestion at the CRAT, and an approach on the second hesitation waltz.


The event is maintaining a web album of photos submitted by pilots and crews. It's available here.

The weather for this afternoon looks good. At 11:30am the winds are still light, so it doesn't appear that we'll have the same issues as yesterday.

We've been working since about 4:00am this morning (about 7½ hours), so it's now time for some food and probably a little nap.