So long and thanks for all the fish....

What an awesome week of flying in Canowindra.  We had it all, wind, rain and beautiful skies.  Unusually for Canowindra the weather was out of the East for a lot of the week and that led to some interesting conditions.

Some fun tasks were set by David levin and his team and overall it was a fun comp to fly in.  A couple of things I have learned:

In a 7 balloon comp, points are critical and its much more like a matchracing scenario than normal comp.  You need to peg your main competitor and get inside them.

It hurts to do a GMD of 3m and be the median pilot!

Trust your gut instinct.  I changed two tasks early in the week based on what should be there and not what my instincts told me would be there and it hurt me.  On the last flight I made a gut call and changed my goal 10 secs before takeoff and it was the right call.

A good team makes all the difference.  My guys were awesome.  We had a great week , with lots of laughs and didn't take ourselves too seriously.

Have fun.  its the whole point of the exercise.

A big note of thanks to the organisers especially Aurthu and Kerry Falconer and Graham and Jan Kerr.  A huge amount of work goes into any event and the value this one returns to my old home town is simply amazing. 

Also a huge amount of thanks to all the volunteers and officials associated with the event.  There is a lot of contention regarding the use of Observers in events, but for mine they add a lot to any event.  ALL of the observers we had were fantastic and seemed to really enjoy themselves.  Its a credit to all of you and to those who have trained you.  Hope to see you all again next year.

All done and dusted.

Final wrap to come when I get around to it.

Robertson 1st, me second, Gibbs 3rd.

Great week

Not happy at all

The view across to Mt Nangar this morning

Afternoon

With an hour to go till briefing the afternoon is overdeveloping again. I doubt there will be a flight.

Well done to Andy who has overtaken me into the lead by 355 points. Very happy for him, and a good boost going into the Worlds in August.

Last morning and PERFECT conditions

5 tasks greeted us this morning. XDD, JDG, 3DT, HWZ, FON.

Busy morning and it seems there has been aided bag of results. Andrew seems like he has had the best of the morning and should do very well.

I went for the showoff option on the Xdd and missedtje glory result by about 15m left. Damn it!

The JDG, 3dt, and HWZ were characterized by quite a fast ground win which meant clino's were required. The cake was OK I think but I topped out of it as I was looking at my baro altimeter not the GPS Alt. Rookie error.

The last FON back towards town was about 120m, so not really good enough.

Let's see what happens.

Pics when I get to the computer later.

No flying this arvo

Plenty of action on the field today. Most of it was in the clouds with a very active afternoon of thunderstorms.

No flying again for anyone.

Tomorrow is last comp day and I have a feeling we will get smashed with a lot of tasks as the weather looks great.

Bourkey packing up the very wet balloon

Wet wet wet

So we had a 4 part task called flying from around Cargo to the North and flying back to town.

Tasks were FIN, GBM, FON, FON.

The weather was marginal to say the least and as we rolled out the launch period was delayed by 30min but not the scoring periods. This meant you had to get off early.

The last FON was also cancelled prob because the weather may not hold.

Let me be clear. It was not a day for flying balloons a as we took off it started raining on us. A couple of big burns an went down, always fun.

With the safety officer uncontactable I called the director to let him know it was now raining. Flight cancellation followed shortly afterwards.

So a 7 minute flight now leaves me with a soaking wet balloon and not super happy.

Seems I am still in first subject to Pauls result in the 3D task,  I dont deserve to be here as Paul nailed everything this morning but made a mistake with the goal declarations.  I am really praying for rain for the next two days :)

http://www.canowindrachallenge.org.au/balloon-competition/comp-results

Pic of the day

This mornings landing

This mornings flight

The flight this morning was a 4 part flight with a PDG, MDD, 3Dshape, and a PDG.

Weather was not superb but we managed to fit it in before the aim came in. It's raining as I type this from breakfast.

Had a good result around 8m on the first PDG, I messed up the MDD approach and only got one into the area.

The shape was a donut and I didn't declare a great goal and struggled to get any movement in the area, so probably a poor result.

The last PDG was ok at around 25m but didn't get the turn I needed on the way past.

As I landed it started spitting rain so it was good to be on the deck.

Not sure how the others have done but that's something I have no say over. We will wait for the results to post and check them out later.

Time for breakfast!

Coming right at us and still a good day for a flight....

Weather

Nice day for a flight apparently.

Comp Day 3

So we missed yesterday afternoons flight with quite strong winds gusting to about 16kts holding through till after sunset.

Overnight we have had some light showers of rain and when I got up 10 min ago it was still having some light showers.

Wind speed has dropped out and now I guess is all about cloudbase and stability of the weather around the showers.

we have the best weather man in the business at the event, Don Whitford, so we are in good hands.

Will post again once Breifing is underway.

YEAH baby!

Triple this morning

FIN, HWZ, FON this morning form out to the east a long way. 42kph at 1500ft which is expected to blow out this afternoons flight.

Everyone inside about 20m in the FIN which is excellent. I did about 11m on the HWZ and then a 7m on the FON.

Everyone is demanding me to be drug tested as I never fly this well :)

A nice shot of town on the way across at about 2000ft is below.

What an arvo!

Another cracker! Quite an energetic launch and a quick flight with 35kph at 4000ft. Single task, H&H, matty looks like he got closest, then probably myself. Let's wait and see.

Results task 2

Results task 1

Comp Results

http://www.canowindrachallenge.org.au/balloon-competition/comp-results

Coming off the field this morning

My shot of the weekend so far

Had a great morning. PDG and FON. around 3.5m on both. Hope it's good enough to take the lead :)

Day 1 - supp briefing

Rest arvo for us

This comp ballooning is so serious!  I swear Bec and I were not enjoying ourselves.  2 years since she's been for a flight and it was a superb morning.

Love this shot

Another morning

Very light winds made a 2 part flight very hard work. PDG filled by FON means a lot of guess work when you have L&V up to 6000ft!

Niteglow a huge success

About 5000 people in the park for the niteglow from all over NSW. perfect weather and a great night had by all.

Niteglow crowd is building

Estimate is 3k at the moment. Not bad for a town of 2100!

David Levin At the master briefing

Almost there

Now

Cracker

First practice flight morning!

weather is looking good for the week

The meteogram up until Friday morning shows great weather for the whole week.  Yeehah!

Competitor Numbers

This year sees a reduced number of competitors.  I guess this is because its a non-Nationals year and because there are so many other events jammed in and around this time of year.  Many people still have their balloons in freight on the way back from Waikato in NZ, and a lot of people have just finished the event in the riverina.

On top of this we also have "The Lake" coming up in July, the World Champs in the USA in August, with Albuquerque and Saga late in October.  I need to find a job that pays me a lot of money and allows me to travel the World ballooning as I choose.  Not sure this will happen :)

Still of the 9 competitors there is a pretty impressive calibre, and I think it will be a tough comp for the weekend warriors of us to get to towards the top end. 

To spruce up the blog a bit I am adding some of my own handiwork with my favourite pics of the last two Canowindra events.

Planning to head off in time to arrive tomorrow afternoon and looking forward to a great flight on Sat morning.  Always makes me happy to be back flying in Canowindra.

Welcome to the 2012 blog for a competitors view of the 2012 Canowindra Challenge.  After the success of last years blog I have decided to give it another go to help you all stay in touch with whats happening during the event.

Looks like a cracker start to the event this weekend with a couple of prize flights on Sat and Sun with the niteglow for the event on Sat night.  All accomodation around the town and surrounding towns is booked out so there will be a HUGE crowd. 

Weather is looking perfect through till about Thursday with the winds turning more northerly later in the week and we will have to see how that plays out. 



I have been told the Royal hotel has put on extra bar staff to accomodate the balloonists.  Actually I think this is mostly for my crew, but its good to support the local economy!

Looking forward to a great 10 days!