More Fiesta Flying

The opening ceremony and lunch:
 

After that we met our passengers from Ford of Hungary for an evening flight over town:
     

Practice flights are scheduled for both tomorrow morning and evening.  So far each one has brought with it a few more balloons, building to the final event total of approximately 123.  Between those flights will be a master briefing tomorrow, certainly at least 1½-2 hours in length.  It will be nice to put some structure to the event and start working on what we came here to do.

I arrived at the opening ceremony a little late, which was actually a good thing.  While everyone else from our hotel was there, I was able to make a 10-minute Internet call to my kids and lovely wife.  Outside of instant messaging it's the first time I've been able to communicate with them since Tuesday.  The quality still wasn't great, but without anyone else using the connection it was adequate.

After 3 flights the ground moisture that we've heard so much about hasn't been an issue.  There are certainly plenty of wet areas, but working around them has been painless.  Given that the event isn't using observers, the need to drive down non-paved roads is all but eliminated.  The problems may come if we get more rain, which some are saying will happen after this weekend.  We haven't seen the sun (literally) since we've been here, but save some showers on Thursday morning it's been dry.  It will be really unfortunate if that changes right at the start of the event. However, should that be the case our fearless leader Al would certain assemble the troops in the parking lot and deliver a motivational oration from his hotel room.

Practice Makes Perfect

This morning Paul, Johnny, Steve and Joe flew a pseudo-competition flight.  Johnny, Steve, and Joe flew into a "target" at one of the common launch areas, while Paul inflated there for a Watership Down-type scenario.  The elder Petrehn took on a stowaway, as Nick Donner hadn't filled his tanks yet and decided to ride along.  Although the competition wasn't as intense as it will be in a few days, it was a good chance to get all the GPS's, computers, and various other items tested in the air.  Team managers Al Nels and Brad Teymeyer started getting their bearings by running a few pibals through the theodolite. Even the event officials got in the act, with Bob and Dottie Humbert handing out some of the Royaltek loggers that will be used during the competition.  The devices are similar to a traditional GPS in that they record a competitor's position (both lat/long and altitude) throughout the flight.  However, unlike other navigational units they have no display screen - just an on/off switch.  Data download is performed exclusively via Bluetooth, which is very different from the traditional method.


Although the competition doesn't begin until Monday morning, today the event "officially" starts with Registration (as opposed to the Pre-Registration that we attended earlier in the week) and the Opening Ceremony/Lunch at 1:30pm.  Tonight the team will fly more VIP's from Ford.  Tomorrow includes practice flights in the morning and evening, with a 1:30pm General Briefing in between.