{"id":693,"date":"2018-03-02T16:30:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T16:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/?page_id=693"},"modified":"2018-03-02T17:03:22","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T17:03:22","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cFlying a balloon is so totally irrelevant and beautiful\u201d stated Bob\u00a0Waligunda\u00a0who flew one of the earliest balloons of the modern era from coast to coast across America for a TV series in 1972.\u00a0Balloons 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\u00a0during the early stages of inflation.\u00a0The following year the US decided to hold a World Championship in Albuquerque.\u00a0At that time there were\u00a0250 pilots in the US and 200 balloons and this represented over half of the combined total for the rest of the world.\u00a0Fourteen countries responded and\u00a032\u00a0pilots participated with the UK represented by Terry Adams, Roger Barrett, Don Cameron and Peter Langford.\u00a0There were 4 types of tasks, three\u00a0involving barograph traces and\u00a0the last, a spot landing contest where the balloon had to land closest to a target.\u00a0\u00a0The 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 \u2013 the fastest time converting to the most points.\u00a0In addition to trying to complete the task you were also responsible for looking after a fairly delicate instrument.\u00a0The 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\u00a0to wait for the winds to change (rules were a bit basic in those days and often decided after an incident!).\u00a0Dennis\u00a0Floden\u00a0from the US won with Terry Adams 5th<\/span>\u00a0and Don Cameron 9th.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text]

\"Image\"\/<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

The Official programme for the 1st World Championships<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n[vc_column_text]\n

As the representatives from the UK at the first World Championships were elected\u00a0by committee\u00a0to represent their country it was decided that for the next event pilots should be decided on their skill.\u00a0Thus 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\u00a0Moroney\u00a0fourth and these would represent the UK at the 2nd<\/span>\u00a0World Championships again held\u00a0in\u00a0 Albuquerque\u00a0later in the year.\u00a0Crispin Williams also took part in this event coming\u00a09th<\/span>\u00a0and continued to attend all the subsequent National Championships until this year. At the 2nd<\/span>\u00a0World Championships\u00a034 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.\u00a0David Schaffer from the US won and that country continued to dominate the top places\u00a0in the World Championships\u00a0for the next 20 years. Jan\u00a0Balkedal\u00a0from Sweden\u00a0came second and Peter\u00a0Vizzard\u00a0from Australia\u00a0third with Giles Hall, Dick Wirth and Martin\u00a0Moroney\u00a04th<\/span>, 5th<\/span>\u00a0and 6th<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/i>Past World Championship Results<\/a>\n

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Over the next few years pilots\u00a0started to enjoy\u00a0the navigation tasks while the barograph flights fell out of favour, partly because of the cost and fragility of the instrument.\u00a0By this time pilots were beginning to land on top of one another in the spot landing task so streamers\u00a0(markers,\u00a0or baggies as the Americans call them)\u00a0were devised and\u00a0for the 3rd<\/span>\u00a0World Championships to be held at Castle Howard in 1977,\u00a0Nigel Tasker set about producing a formal rule book.\u00a0This was accepted and the basic rules have remained fairly unaltered since then. The rules contained the tasks that\u00a0could be set; at that time these were the Pilot Declared Goal, Judge Declared Goal, Elbow, Hare and Hound and\u00a0Fly-In (Convergent navigational Task as it was called then).\u00a0Many more have been added since.\u00a0Written by\u00a0David Bareford<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] \u201cFlying a balloon is so totally irrelevant and beautiful\u201d stated Bob\u00a0Waligunda\u00a0who flew one of the earliest balloons of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-693","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/693\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukcompetitionballooning.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}