Watership Down

15.7 WATERSHIP DOWN (WSD)

15.7.1 Competitors will fly to the launch point of a hare balloon, follow the hare and attempt to achieve a mark or valid track point close to a target displayed by the hare no more than two meters upwind of the basket after landing.

15.7.2 Task data:

a. description of the hare balloon b. location of the launch point of the hare balloon c. set take-off time of the hare balloon d. intended flight duration of the hare balloon

15.7.3 The result is the distance from the mark or closest valid track point to the target. Smallest result is best.

15.7.4 If the hare balloon does not take off within 5 minutes after the set time then this task is considered cancelled.

15.7.5 Variation from the flight duration of the hare shall not be ground for complaint.

15.7.6 The hare may deflate after landing and may be removed from the field.

15.7.7 The hare may display a banner hanging below his basket. No competitor shall display any banner hanging below the basket during this task.

Competition Ballooning – Watership Down

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

The Watership Down task (Rule 15.7) was named by Nigel Tasker after the book of the same name, because of its association with rabbits linking it to hares in the Hare and Hounds as it is a variation of that task. By coincidence Watership Down was the name of a village in Berkshire where Tom Sheppard, a renowned competition director for over 20 years, was born. The task is simply a Fly-In followed by a Hare and Hounds. You are given the same parameters for a Fly-In (Chapter 7) but instead of dropping your marker at the fly-in point you then follow a hare balloon that launches from that point. So, in addition to the parameters for a fly-in task you have the parameters for the hare and hounds task including the intended launch time of the hare balloon (Chapter 8). The aim is to drop your marker at the target displayed where the hare lands. The additional decision you have to make for the fly-in task is the time of launch so that you aim to arrive at the fly-in point about 10 minutes after the hare has departed. Launching too early may mean passing over the hare balloon before it has launched; launching too late may mean that it is difficult to see the hare in the distance and the winds may have changed in the interim. If you do find you are flying over the hare before the launch time then all you can do is hug the ground hoping the hare passes over you and the winds allow you the chance to get behind it. If the hare is unable to launch, a target is set out at its launch point so the task becomes a simple fly-in. The hare usually flies for about 30 minutes though that may be extended as the pilot has to find a suitable field to land in; one where the markers can be easily measured around the target. The task was added to Chapter 15 as it was argued that if you set a fly-in followed by a hare and hounds then if you missed the fly-in you were unlikely do well in the hare and hounds so had the chance of losing 2000 points. Rule 8.4.1 states that in multiple tasks “the combination of tasks should aim at the possibility of winning each task independently”. However, most competition directors and pilots felt that, in the end, this combination task is a lot of work for 1000 points so most have gone back to setting a fly-in followed by a hare and hounds as two separate tasks and ignore rule 8.4.1.

Figure 3: Reaching the Hare, Sagrantino Challenge Cup 2017 (David Bareford

Written by David Bareford