Balloon sport
Balloon sport is a branch of air sport and describes all types of sporting activities that are carried out with aircraft "lighter than air" . These include gas balloons , hot air balloons and hot air airships . The Commission Internationale d'Aérostation (CIA) of the World Air Sports Federation FAI is responsible for organizing international competitions, such as world and European championships .
history
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) was founded on October 14, 1905. Eleven months later, the American publisher James Gordon Bennett junior suggested a competition for gas balloons, in which the winner was who reached the greatest distance from the starting point. The first winner was the American Frank Lahm , who drove 640 kilometers from Paris to the northeast coast of England.
A hundred years later, the Gordon Bennett Cup (Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett) was held for the 50th time. The Belgians Philippe de Cock and Ronny van Havere were the winners. The competition is the oldest international balloon sport event and was held for the 61st time in 2017. In 1995 the Germans Wilhelm Eimers and Bernd Landsmann set an hour record with a trip from Wil in Switzerland to Riga in Latvia. They landed there after a balloon flight of 92:11 hours and 1,628.1 kilometers. In 2005 the Belgians Bob Berben and Benoît Siméons set a course record of 3400.39 kilometers in the USA after driving 65:20 hours.
The world championship of gas balloons has been held irregularly since 1976. The venue for the next World Cup is the country of the winner.
World championships have been held with hot air balloons since 1973. The first venue was Albuquerque , New Mexico. The 23rd edition will take place in Austria in 2018. The current world champion is the American Rhett Heartsill ( Saga (Japan), 2016). His compatriot David Levin (1948–2017) is the only “triple crown” pilot who was world champion in hot air in 1985 and in gas balloon in 1992, and who in 1992 also won the famous Gordon Bennett race.
Women have no chance in these competitions. Therefore, after a series of secondary FAI women’s World Cups, an FAI European Championship was held in Alytus (Lithuania) for the first time in 2010 and an FAI World Championship in Leszno (Poland) in 2014 . World and European champions are currently the Polish Daria Dudkiewicz-Golawska ( Nałęczów, 2018 ) and Beata Choma ( Leszno, 2017 ).
The Swiss Stefan Zeberli currently leads the world rankings . Sven Göhler , Uwe Schneider, David Strasmann , Dolores Deimling and Sylvia Meinl are among the best German balloon athletes . Elisabeth Kindermann from Austria won the silver medal in Leszno in 2014 , just a few points behind Scaife .
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Balloon sport events are usually multi-day competitions. Since hot air balloons are sensitive to thermals , the trips are scheduled in the summer half of the year in the first hours after sunrise and in the last hours before sunset. Thermal waves that set in earlier or the premature formation of a storm front can lead to aborted journeys.
Since the tasks are only fixed a short time before the competition ride, they cannot be announced to the spectators in advance. Championships are therefore usually accompanied by a fiesta that takes place closer to the audience. An evening balloon glow is part of every event. Major events such as the Montgolfiaden can also be associated with competitions.
Balloons from 1600 to 2600 m³ are called competition balloons or racers . They are therefore smaller than the usual balloons with which one can also take part in competitions. Racers are also much slimmer and can therefore climb or sink much faster without a braking ( parachute ) effect occurring through the shell. However, conventional balloons can also participate.
A general briefing takes place before competitions in which the regulations, means of communication, weather conditions, safety regulations and restrictions, such as no-fly zones and areas (e.g. airports, chemical plants, motorways and high-voltage lines) are presented and discussed.
Before each race there is a briefing in which the tasks are set and the current weather conditions are made known. In the event of changing weather conditions, changes, such as current wind conditions or the cancellation of tasks, can be announced in field briefings until the start is approved.
Each competition requires a larger number of volunteers. In addition to the competition management, there are two meteorologists , an office for the evaluation and reproduction of the tasks and results. There are also target teams who lay out target crosses and measure the discarded markers. In addition, there are stewards for gas refueling and for starts close to the audience. An independent jury checks compliance with the regulations and handles objections from participants.
Competition tasks
Several balloon rides are carried out for the competitions, at least two rides must be carried out for international competitions to count as a championship. A number of tasks must be solved in the best possible way with every journey. The respective starting place is either given or can be freely chosen by the pilot within a certain framework.
For many tasks it is important to hit the target cross with a marking strip (marker) that is weighted on one side. The destination was either set before the trip or is determined by the pilot himself before or during the trip in defined time windows. Other tasks concern long or slow journeys in certain time periods. Thanks to GPS navigation and recording, it is now possible to set and evaluate two- or three-dimensional tasks. This includes, for example, driving an angle using the air flow at different heights.
In the fox hunt , a balloon starts with a time advantage and places a target cross at the landing site. The chasing balloonists try to place their markers as close as possible. The order of all tasks can be predetermined or is determined by the pilot himself as part of his tactics. Most balloonists today carry laptops for their tactical travel planning.
Documentation and evaluation
In the past, competition rides were accompanied by sports witnesses ("observers") in a balloon basket. Each pilot was assigned a sports gear for each trip. They observed whether everything had happened according to the competition rules during the journey.
Today, competition drives are monitored by loggers . The FAI loggers are calibrated and, in addition to documenting the route, height and duration of the competition drive, also document and declare destinations. The competition pilot can document the achievement of a virtual destination at a fixed height above the ground, declare his own goals while driving or document three-dimensional tasks such as driving a partial circle (“ donut ”). For example, if he drives past a target cross at a greater distance, he can document his distance on the logger with an electronic marker.
The logger data is read out and evaluated after the individual journeys. The pilot or pilots who performed a task best receive 1000 points each. The further points are calculated depending on the distance between the following balloonists, so points are also awarded if a task is not fulfilled. Penalty points can be awarded for early starts, ground contact or violation of safety regulations.
Extreme sports and records
In 1992, Bertrand Piccard and Wim Verstraeten won the Chrysler Challenge , the first transatlantic balloon competition from the USA to cross the Atlantic . The team landed in Spain after five days and 5000 kilometers.
After two attempts that were canceled prematurely (1997 and 1998) Piccard and Brian Jones succeeded in the first circumnavigation of the world without a stopover in 1999. On March 21, they landed after a journey of 45,755 kilometers, which took them 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes.
Steve Fossett undertook faster and solo trips around the world in 13 days and 8.3 hours (2002) and Fyodor Konjuchow (2016) in 11 days and 5.5 hours, both started near Perth , Australia and only had to cover about 33,000 kilometers return. These circumnavigations of the world were undertaken with balloons of the Rozière type , which is a combination of hot air and gas balloon.
The FAI has world records for each balloon class, currently 1174 records are registered (as of March 31, 2018).
See also
Web links
- fai.org - Website of the World Air Sports Federation FAI
- World ranking
- FAI: Gordon Bennett Cup . (English)
- German Free Ballooning Association V.
- National team hot air balloon
literature
- Rudolf H. Böttcher: Four-part accompanying series for the German championship in ballooning. In: Die Rheinpfalz , Frankenthaler Zeitung, April 29–3. May 2008.
References and comments
- ↑ Current CIA World Ranking List in Hot Air Ballooning. (As of January 2018)
- ↑ 15 days, 10 hours and 24 minutes for the route around the equator.
- ↑ FAI: FEDOR KONYUKHOV COMPLETED THE SOLO AROUND THE WORLD TOUR AND LANDED SAFELY IN AUSTRALIA! . (English, July 23, 2016)
- ^ FAI: Records .