History

“Flying a balloon is so totally irrelevant and beautiful” stated Bob Waligunda who flew one of the earliest balloons of the modern era from coast to coast across America for a TV series in 1972. Balloons then were there to follow the winds and competition ballooning was very rudimentary. Competitive tasks were mainly based on control of the balloon with height using barographs; though some included inflation races where one had a very good chance of burning your balloon or crew as at that time there were no such things as inflator fans and some poor crew member (usually nicknamed cremation charlie) had to stand in the balloon with a broom to hold the mouth up during the early stages of inflation. The following year the US decided to hold a World Championship in Albuquerque. At that time there were 250 pilots in the US and 200 balloons and this represented over half of the combined total for the rest of the world. Fourteen countries responded and 32 pilots participated with the UK represented by Terry Adams, Roger Barrett, Don Cameron and Peter Langford. There were 4 types of tasks, three involving barograph traces and the last, a spot landing contest where the balloon had to land closest to a target.  The barograph tasks consisted of a Flight Profile test where the pilot had to fly the balloon in such a way that the barograph trace followed the pre-inscribed pattern as close as possible; the second was the Rapid Climb and Level-Off Test where the pilot had to reach a predetermined height and then keep his barograph tracer within two marked parallel lines on the drum and the third task was the Climbing and Descent Flight Control test in which the pilot has to climb to 1,000ft, back down to within 10ft of the ground without touching, back up to 1,000ft and then back to within 200ft – the fastest time converting to the most points. In addition to trying to complete the task you were also responsible for looking after a fairly delicate instrument. The competition took place over 4 days with flights taking place in the morning only with one task per flight. There was one spot landing task which Don Cameron would have won if he had not made an intermediary landing to wait for the winds to change (rules were a bit basic in those days and often decided after an incident!). Dennis Floden from the US won with Terry Adams 5th and Don Cameron 9th.

As the representatives from the UK at the first World Championships were elected by committee to represent their country it was decided that for the next event pilots should be decided on their skill. Thus the first British Nationals took place 2 years later at Castle Howard, Yorkshire with 12 competitors. 7 tasks were flown; 4 Judge Declared Goals and 3 Hare and Hounds. Bernard Hockley won with Dick Wirth second, Giles Hall third and Martin Moroney fourth and these would represent the UK at the 2nd World Championships again held in  Albuquerque later in the year. Crispin Williams also took part in this event coming 9th and continued to attend all the subsequent National Championships until this year. At the 2nd World Championships 34 pilots competed. Again only 5 tasks were set with one barograph task and one inflation race; the other three were a Fly-in, a Hare and Hounds and an Elbow. David Schaffer from the US won and that country continued to dominate the top places in the World Championships for the next 20 years. Jan Balkedal from Sweden came second and Peter Vizzard from Australia third with Giles Hall, Dick Wirth and Martin Moroney 4th, 5th and 6th.  

Over the next few years pilots started to enjoy the navigation tasks while the barograph flights fell out of favour, partly because of the cost and fragility of the instrument. By this time pilots were beginning to land on top of one another in the spot landing task so streamers (markers, or baggies as the Americans call them) were devised and for the 3rd World Championships to be held at Castle Howard in 1977, Nigel Tasker set about producing a formal rule book. This was accepted and the basic rules have remained fairly unaltered since then. The rules contained the tasks that could be set; at that time these were the Pilot Declared Goal, Judge Declared Goal, Elbow, Hare and Hound and Fly-In (Convergent navigational Task as it was called then). Many more have been added since. Written by David Bareford