Day 2, AM Flight (aka "Sleeping In")

They asked us to make our banner
numbers more distinct.  We used blue
duct tape.  I wonder if this will affect
the ability to get the deposit back?

The Tuesday morning flight has been cancelled.  The call came at around 4:15am, just as I was getting out of the shower.  It's raining and will continue to do so for awhile.  This is despite the fact that yesterday afternoon the weather officer's briefing indicated that this morning should be very much like yesterday.  I believe everyone from Team USA is still asleep.

There's still no scores posted on the event website, and the official notice board at the competition center is a 15 minute drive.  It would be cool if the scores (including provisional) could be posted online at the same time they're stapled to a board somewhere.  Transparency and dissemination.  And the same with task sheets.  They're already copying 250 pieces of paper, so it's conceivable that one could be made available online at the precise moment that information is available in the physical briefing area.

As it stands right now when the briefing doors open Paul and I go to our table, then I take one of our two task sheets and walk it out to Erica so she, Larry, and Andrew can see what's happening and get the necessary info into their devices.  If the sheet is online not only does that process get easier but the whole world can then see what's going on.  If people are interested in following our sport, this could cultivate that.

Supposedly pilots here are going to be able to download their official track after each flight using a password-secured website.  We were previously told that instructions would be distributed yesterday, but they were not.  Hopefully that will be setup today, because it's definitely a step in the right direction - especially if the data is available within the protest window for a given task.

I will conceded that both the posting of scores and task sheets has been a challenge for events everywhere, so maybe I'm missing something.   The Austrian Worlds in 2008 did a great job of putting both online in a very timely manner.

Apparently there was an issue with propane last night, something about the event only allowing 3 tanks to be filled per balloon. After the morning flight they actually ran out of fuel, meaning that some competitors (including Johnny Petrehn) didn't get their tanks filled until just before the evening briefing.

Monday PM common launch field.

Impossible to avoid.

There's a couple of these here.

Monday PM refueling = 1 hour

So far we've used the same common launch area for both flights.  It's an airport south of town, less than a mile from our hotel.  However it's several miles from where the briefings are held, with a drive right through town required.  For both flights we've had "police escorts", which actually means officers are stationed at nearly every intersection between the two locations stopping traffic.  It's an amazing process, especially considering that's it's rush hour (both morning and evening) when it happens.  Really cool, like being part of a 50mph parade.

And speaking of the Debrecen airport, it's an old Soviet military base that was vacated in May 1991.  The city owns it now.  It doesn't appear to be very busy, but there's still these giant earth-covered hangers there - they look like 40' tall speed bumps.  And the coolest part is the giant radar system that still operates on the east side of the property.  It's an absolutely massive set of structures, and when it's in operation it's like a house sitting on a turntable - this huge thing spinning around really fast.  The system must not be too important though, because yesterday when the event officials suspected it was causing problems with the loggers a couple calls were made and just like that it's now going to be shut off when we fly from there.  I'm going to try to get a picture or some video of the whole thing, because it's like a history lesson.  And apparently the neighborhood that our hotel is in (just northeast of the airport) was military barracks for the base.

The chasing here is something else.  I've never been in a place where so many roads that are supposed to exist either don't or are nothing more than a farm trail.  Japan was a bit like this, but there a difference in road quality was usually indicated on the map.  In many cases a paved road and a two-track show up the same - both on the Nuvi GPS and the competition map.  And there's these new, modern, concrete bridges over the highway that go from one farm field to another, many with no way to get to them because either the connecting roads are too muddy right now or aren't drivable even in good weather.  Fortunately while I'm driving Erica is sitting the passenger seat with a moving-map laptop telling me where to go, so finding an alternate route (or in the case of yesterday morning 5 alternate routes) isn't a problem.

It's funny, when I try to spell-check these Blogger posts every word shows up as being incorrect because I'm not typing in Hungarian...