The last competition flight of this years Saga International Balloon fiesta is now over.We had three tasks (Where have all the quads gone?) being a PDG, JDG and JDG.
The two JDG's has limited scoring areas of 200m radius so it was critical to get into them.
The surface winds were very light and variable but the upper winds would take us out the North East and onto the goals. After much deliberation I picked a PDG out to the NE and climbed out in the middle of the pack. I had to go to 2200 ft to get enough right but it was there and the speed was good.
The approach to the PDG was a nice slow spiral in with it turning left all the way down. It was really nice to just make small adjustments to my location by varying the descent rate. I slowly spun in and ended up right over the intersection and dropped 4.48m by gravity drop. I had just watched Mizukami and a few others at the same intersection and it was a good result compared to them.
Paul was following me in so I quickly explained how it worked for me and he followed me in for about 4.37m drop. That will teach me for playing as a team!
It was then a climb out to 2800ft to get over to the first JDG. The approach was almost identical but many people were struggling with it. I played it a little bit more to the south and tracked straight in for a drop of what looked like less than 3m. As far as I know it is second place on that task.
Paul also did really well on the JDG but was bumped off right near the end. It still should score ok.
The third task was a waste of time. The JDG was set too far south an nobody could get to it. We all hung around about 1.5km to the north waiting for the wind to change and when it did we kept going north. In the end everyone gave up with a bout half an hour to go.
So what does it mean? No idea. I am pretty sure I beat a few of the people I needed to. I have to be in the top ten some where but no idea how far up two near perfect results will get me. It is all down to how the others did. Fingers crossed.
I have lots of great photos to put on flickr so look out for those.
Key grab this afternoon so time to try and add a car to prize package!
