Last weekend 14 teams from 6 countries participated at the "Deutsche Meisterschaft Gasballon 2009" in Mettingen:
The teams:
01 - Tobias ANZENEDER (D-OWBM) GER
02 - Bob BERBEN (D-OBYN) BEL
03 - Alfred DERKS (D-OWML) GER
04 - Kurt FRIEDEN (HB-QHJ) SUI
05 - Dominik HAGGENEY (D-OWNT) GER
06 - Bepperl HÖHL (D-OWBI) GER
07 - Tomas HORA (D-OSTZ) GER
08 - Markus PIEPER (D-OWBA) GER
09 - Klaus SCHMÖHL (D-OWBF) GER
10 - Gerald STÜRZLINGER (D-ORZL) AUT
11 - Rainer HERKENHOFF (D-OIBB) GER outside competition
12 - Axel HUNNEKUHL (D-OWBO) GER outside competition
13 - Ben MATTSSON (OH-ENI) FIN outside competition
14 Jan SMRCKA (OK-0001) CZK outside competition
The start had to be delayed because of the bad weather, but Friday at sunrise the "fox" finally ascended and herewith started the German gasballooning championship. After ten minutes the first team took off and 16 minutes later all the balloons were aloft for a new adventure.
The competitors had to accomplish 5 tasks before sunset.
Task 1: Judge Declared Goal
A goal was set near Jöllenbeck, N. Bielkefeld, approximately 60km from the starting field. Every team carried a gps to registrate every second their altitude and position. These track-logs are used after the race to determine the results.
Task 2: Fox hunt
At 08:15hr the fox landed near Bad Salzuflen. Jan Smrczka managed to throw the marker at 20,60 Meter, a Warsteiner balloon threw the marker outside the 50 Meter radius but the marker never turned up. For the other balloons the track-logs will be studied to see how close they came to the fox.
Task 3: Pilot Declared Goal
Using the weather predictions for the first 3 flight hours, the pilots had to declare individual goals before the start of the competition. All the goals had to be set east of the A7 expressway, between Göttingen and Ertfürt. The pilots had to show their ability to navigate to a place of their own choice.
Task 4: Hesitation Waltz
Before the competition the pilots had to set 3 goals, situated in the competition area between 12° and 14° East an north of 50° N. In flight the pilot had to decide which goal to fly to (taking the available wind speed an direction into account).
Task 5: Maximum Distance (with time limit)
The pilots had to travel the greatest distance from the launch point within the maximum time allowed (15 hours) before dropping the marker. 20:50hr: the last team (Kurt Frieden and Pascal Witpraechtiger) set foot to earth at 50 km south of Prague.
The teams returned to the competion center on Sunday, where the tournament organisation started to study the track-logs.
As soon as the results are known we will post them here too...
