Category: Ballooning
2007 Australian Nationals
Jul 15, 11:05 PM
What a week!!
I have been to lots of Nationals and even a worlds, but its a totally different thing when you on the other side of the fence, as a team not an official.
Although I wasn’t a Pilot, I was navigating for my dad Scobie. We started the week with hopes of being mid field, out of 23 competitors, we were aiming to crack 15th place. Did we get a surprise or what!! After the first day we were ranked 4th, then on the second day, were ranked 2nd. We totally blew 2 tasks which dropped us back to about 8 but with on the last day we managed to reel in the others and gain a finish of 5th place!! Pretty good for an old Cameron N-90 with 720+ hours…
The only guys who bet us were the ones who went to the worlds last year, so look out guys, in 2009 its ON!!
I am not sure whether I will be flying or navigating yet, we will see when the time comes, first we need a new balloon and I need to practice… well maybe finish school first then do that.
My laptop setup in the balloon worked great, and I think I can thank it for some of the good results we got. Now I have experienced first hand competition, I have ideas bursting out of me for things to do next time, mostly gadgets and things. I think I am going to totally rewrite my “competition helper” program, as I have though of lots of great ways in which it can help with those trickier tasks, although we did not get any CRT’s and Angle tasks, we were close to it, so there’s lots of ideas flowing around for helping out with them.
Flying conditions were different to what most were used to in Mildura, I don’t think we had any marker drops under 100-200ft. My special marker drift calculator program worked neat, with a 1200ft drop achieving a 2.7m result (well 10.6 officially but 2.7m from the cross I was throwing to).
Like in Sean’s post I think I will highlight some goods and some bads.
Good things
Learning so much about competition
Our crew, that we met the afternoon before the comp
The laptop in the car, and in the balloon
Getting a top 5 position with our old balloon
Bad things
Refuelling, still ok but not what we are used to
The one bad task which I won’t speak of
Flying over a goal, about to throw then seeing 3 crosses? Which one do you throw to!!
It ending…
The top 9 were as follows:
1 06 Paul Gibbs NSW 522 1000 898 782 1000 130 948 730 975 865 865 834 685 998 899 12131
2 01 Sean Kavanagh NSW 912 715 861 857 986 435 787 868 558 130 1000 758 715 925 794 11301
3 14 Edwin Michell SA 739 975 992 775 522 391 746 796 969 994 174 1000 995 435 570 11073
4 02 Andrew Robertson NSW 569 698 1000 43 652 884 1000 945 946 577 391 737 892 1000 702 11036
5 16 Scobie Peart VIC 391 877 970 909 692 938 522 614 43 574 936 737 977 776 662 10618
6 08 Neville Blyth ACT 217 674 972 738 664 638 819 261 579 304 944 941 1000 588 708 10047
7 25 Peter Wright VIC 813 391 478 391 958 1000 818 850 905 967 724 239 668 391 348 9941
8 15 Phil Kavanagh NSW 840 478 348 130 815 815 889 898 435 964 992 629 0 915 790 9938
9 03 Ewan Roberts ACT 1000 864 680 857 478 304 391 567 926 613 304 801 217 728 869 9599
Piball Lights
Jun 20, 12:36 AM
Finally received my new batteries for my Piball lights.
I got 100 of one type, but they turned out to be a bit too heavy, do I got another 100 of a new type which is alot lighter.
The cool thing about these is the LED, its a green wide angle, 120deg, flat top LED.
Green because that is the most receptive colour to the human eye, so easy to see at night.
Wide angle means that instead os like a normal LED where all the light is focused at a point, the light is spread out, making it easier to see from different angles when on a Piball.
I got the batteries and LED’s from my LED supplier, I buy 10k+ LED’s off them a month so I get good prices. All up including shipping to me, each time I let one of these drift off, its $0.40aud, not too bad.
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Laptop Mount Pt.1
Jun 20, 12:13 AM
Just a few pics of my laptop/tablet mounting system for the balloon.
The mount so far is a simple but of ply with pins edges, all covered in a single layer of black felt.
This is my second go at a box for the laptop, and this one is alot lighter than the last which is a good thing. Another thing to keep in mind, is that my last box I made to fit the laptop snug, but that was in the daytime. In a cold morning the wood expanded and made it very hard to get the laptop into it, this one has tolerance for that, so keep it in mind.
The velcro strap goes between the keyboard and screen when the laptop is in tablet mode, which secures it nicely.
Pt.2 will be how I decide to mount it to the basket.
Its been a long time comming
Jun 7, 12:26 AM
Well I have finally sent away all I need to get my Hot Air Balloon, Private Pilot Licence, and its been a long time coming :)
My total time from first student flight to check flight was 2 months and 1 day, not too bad. Mind you it took me a good year from then to send away the paperwork, but at least now its all now.
As far as I know, I am the youngest (current and ever) balloon pilot in Australia, pretty cool I think.
Hopefully I will be able to have my first PIC (Pilot in Command) flight this weekend, weather permitting of course, photos will follow if I do.
Gus Out!