Hesitation Waltz

Competition Ballooning – Hesitation Waltz

The rule (or information) for this task is set out in Chapter 15 of the Event Rules

There are several tasks left in the competition handbook which I will deal with more briefly as they are similar to tasks already discussed so tactics are similar.  

The Hesitation Waltz (Rule 15.3) is also called a Multiple Judge Declared Goal and is just that; instead of just one goal given in a Judge Declared Goal (chapter 5) you are given several, usually two or three and you only have to fly to one. These are set some 5-10^o apart, one in the direction of the lower winds and one on the upper winds. As you now have a choice of goals or targets to go for It is always useful to try and predict which goal you will aim for before taking off. On deciding that, you will have to consider the time taken to get to the goals; taking the lower slower winds may compromise you on time limits for that task and subsequent ones. The second variable to consider is whether the wind is likely to change while you are flying the task; a goal set on the lower winds (to the left in the northern hemisphere) in a morning task may become achievable as the ground heats up and the inversion dissipates. Though it is helpful to try to judge which target you will attempt to fly to before launching, the task allows you to change your mind right up to when you drop your marker. You will always be scored to the nearest goal your marker lands to, even if you were trying to head for another one. 

It is one of the most commonly used task in the repertoire. It is set either when the director is trying to split the field so that not all balloons are converging on one target or when the wind direction is uncertain. The uncertainty can be due to light and variable winds or, as often happens in evening tasks, the wind is gusting slightly with no predictable change in direction with height. With light and variable winds, I have seen goals set on the 8 points of the compass and in an even more bizarre case, any valid goal on the competition map!  In those situations, a task should not have been set as that is indicating that the winds are so variable that it will be chance only whether you pass over a valid goal. When the winds appear to be gusting in one general direction with no predictable steerage, it is often the case that it is only after you have taken off that you can estimate which goal you may get to or get the closest to. In these conditions, you may find that by ascending and descending you have 5 degrees of steerage and you have to use the best of that to get to the goal closest to the directions you can achieve. You will find that other competitors will be in their own column of air with their own limits of steerage; these may bring them over a target but not you and once launched you will be stuck with yours, for better or worse.  That is the element of luck in competition and you have a good day when your limited ability to steer takes you straight over the target while you see other competitors asking desperately over the radio at what height is there a wind that will take them more to the left or to the right of their present track and closer to a goal. On many occasions in this task set in such evening conditions I have ended up flying straight between the two goals given.   

Figure 1: Hesitation Waltz, British Nationals 2017

Fig 2:  Using the low level valley winds towards HW1, British Nationals 2017  (John Tyrell)

Written by David Bareford