From May 16th - 20th the German Gasballooning Championship took place in Bitterfeld (G).
And the new German Champion is ..... TOMAS HORA !!! Congratulations, Tomas !
The first fligt was scheduled for Thursday 17th, but due to strong winds and continuous rain the flight was cancelled. Friday morning (around 6:00hr LT) the 10 balloons finally took off for a flight with 5 tasks. Fox Thomas Fink was the first to leave, and he layed out the first target cross east of Bad Düben. 5 of the 10 contestants managed to score within 100m of the cross. The best result was for Tomas Hora.
A second target was set west of Torgau, and there Tomas Hora was the only pilot who could score less than 100m from the cross.
Afterwards they had to fly direction Czech Republic where 2 other targets waited for them, and finally the balloons had to fly the fartest distance possible with a landing before sunset. The expectations were that landings would take place in Czechia or Austria. Eimers/Pieper/Zenge landed at about 21:00hr with their D-OWBI near Linz, and two other teams crossed the Austrian border.
On Sunday morning 8 teams (2 teams had to give up due to technical problems) took off again to accomplish 2 tasks. First they had to fly into 1 of 2 targets that were set at a distance of approximately 23 km from the launch field. The second task was to fly the shortest distance within a one hour period. Willy Eimers scored best for both these tasks. As our Belgian pilot Bob Berben ended second (as in 2005), it is Eimers who will be vice champion. But also this time Tomas Hora, who had as partner Volker Lösschorn, becomes The German Champion gasballooning.
Final results:
1 Hora, Tomas 6040 pts
2 Berben, Bob 5713 pts
3 Eimers, Wilhelm 5206 pts
4 Schmöhl, Klaus 4820 pts
5 Stahlkopf, Frank 4453 pts
6 Höhl, Josef 4382 pts
7 Wiechmann, Andreas 3890 pts
8 Naumann, Hans-Otto 1824 pts
9 Krafczyk, Peter 1815 pts
10 Derks, Alfred 700 pts
For those who are interested in this championship we have a complete bundle of information: the participants, the tasks, the weather forecasts, the results per task, the final ranking etc...
You can download the info here: Documentation DM Gasballon. Enjoy yourself!
