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June 2010

The 1st Womens' European Championship has taken place in Alytus, Lithuania.

Although Lindsay Muir was not keen on women only events, she took part and came second behind Gabriela Slavec from Slovenia with Jolanta Matejczuk from Poland placing 3rd. Having spoken to many of the Pilots there, she now has a better understanding of why this type of event is so important to some of the up and coming women pilots.

Full results can be seen on on the web by using this link.

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May 2010

The first Grand Prix of the season has taken place and the results are now available at the bottom of this page in the results section.

Many thanks to the Event Director (Andrew Holly) and his team of officials for a job very well done in testing weather conditions.

Congratulations go to Davils Usill in his new balloon (Window on the World) who took the honours.

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The Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race comes to Great Britain for the first time since the race first launched in 1906. A balloon race of endurance and great challenge, the balloon which flies the further wins in a race which can last four or five days - that's a long time to be in a wicker basket!

Launching from Bristol on Saturday 25th September 2010 this is sure to be an exciting and spectacular event. The event comes to GB as David Hempleman-Adams and Jon Mason won the race in 2008 flying for 74.24 hours and cover 1,767 kms from Albuquerque to Milwaukee.

The race comes with honour and prestige, but without finance, so we are looking to companies and individuals to sponsor this historic, unique and exciting event. More details www.gordonbennett2010.com or email info@GB2010.net

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British pilot Richard Parry Came through to take the Bronze behind Stefan Zebrili (Swiss) and Francois Messines (France) in a hard fought Championship. David Bareford came 4th, Neil Gabriel 25th and Andrew Holly 35th, this meant all our pilots were in the top half of the leaderboard and so Team GB took the overall Team Prize.

For full results click here

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British pilots Richard Parry and David Bareford came through to take silver and bronze medals at the LUXGSM World Balloon Trophy event in Luxembourg.  25 teams had gathered in Echternach for the prestigious FAI category 1 event directed by Claude Weber and assisted by Zoltan Palhegyi. The organisation and hospitality were superb which together with the good weather and new Flytech loggers made for a wonderful event. The new loggers were relatively simple to use, provided the pilot with a secondary altimeter and other data,  plus they proved faultless in their ability to provide the balloon data required for the scoring teams. No backup GPS downloads were required from any balloon team and the Andre brothers, who designed the software, earned some well deserved praise. Two slots were lost due to adverse weather and cancelled by SMS in good time, but we still managed 18 tasks over 5 flights with 12 different types of tasks including a FON and 3 PDGs declared via the new loggers. The British Armada comprised Messrs Bareford, Holly, Green and Parry and provided a powerful challenge to the German Luftwaffe but in the end it was the local hero Nico Betzen who won the day overall.  There is a strong rumour that Messrs Bareford and Green, who scooped €4,000 of cash in the final FIN flight to the target on Lake Echternach, will be buying a few beers in the gliding club at Husbands Bosworth during Nationals week!  You can see the full results and task sheets from Luxembourg by clicking here.

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The 2009 World Air Games was held at various locations around Turin and covered many aviation sports.  The WAG is essentially the Olympic Games of aviation sport and includes aerobatics, microlighting, skydiving, gliding, aeromodelling - and of course ballooning.  The ballooning competition was held at Mondovi and gathered together 28 of the best pilots in the world with invitations only going out to countries who were highly placed at the last two world championships.  The UK received 2 invitations which were filled by Andrew Holly and Neil Gabriel.  The week started very well for Neil who took an early lead in the competition and although he lost some momentum, he finished 4th overall.  Andrew fought hard to achieve his 15th place and would likely have done even better had he not offered to take off first on the last flight in order to relay back wind information to Neil and his team.
The final results sheet can be accessed here.

Our recent pair of team coordinators has been honoured by the British Balloon and Airship Club at their Annual General Meeting.  Both Andy Booth and Alan Scrase are worthy recipients of BBAC Diplomas for their hard work and dedication.  At international events such as the World and European Championships, the role of team coordinator begins with providing all the British pilots with as much information on wind and weather as possible, but it also extends to a wide variety of logistical support tasks.  Their aim is to assist the British pilots in acting as a cohesive group in order for each to benefit from the other - this has been shown greatly to assist the overall performance of the British Team.