The US National Championship; every competitive pilot’s dream. After two years of flying competitive tasks I had decided I was ready. After just the second flight, I was no longer so sure.
Columbia, Missouri was the host city for the 1996 Nationals, the second of their three-year contract with the BFA Competition Division. The area features rolling hills, wide open fields, tree-lined roads and topography in general that promised great flying. True to their word, the Missouri Balloon Corporation had addressed the horror of more than 130 PZ’s from the previous year, and 1996 offered just 103 PZ’s as pilots began marking their maps upon arrival. Completed maps still looked as if they had been blood-splattered, but the improvement was noticeable.
After marking the maps came several hours of driving the roads to look at the targets firsthand, noting landmarks such as water towers, radio towers, barns, churches, schools etc. A media flight Thursday evening provided my first aerial look at the playing field. I felt and thought I was ready.
Saturday morning brought on the opening tasks. A fly-in to the field and a multiple judge declared goal. All the advice from friends like Bill Bussey and defending National Champion Pat Canon echoed through my subconscious. “Don’t get greedy, just be consistent. Score, Score, Score. Give up distance to score if necessary. Don’t make stupid mistakes. Read the rule book over and over and over.”
We launched in fairly light winds but with good steerage. A near straight-line path took me into the field slightly right of the target. A good throw and I was on the leg of the X, 20 feet out—good only for 40th place. On to my choice of the MJDG targets. I went north with most of the pack while a smaller group chose lower winds for a target to the west. My drop of several hundred meters was only adequate. Still, I had met my personal goal.. scored on both tasks and put my markers where they could be easily found. No stupid mistakes, I was feeling pretty confident, even if tied for 60th place overall. That confidence would soon fade...
Low clouds and rain moved in to spoil the opening weekend. We did not fly again until Monday morning. On this day, I would feel like a real Rookie.
We were greeted with a 4-part task, a PDG, Fly In, Fly-on and a Fly-on. Director Dan Sherrill was losing no time in making up for the lost weekend flights. Fortunately I had pre-arranged the opportunity to work with Pat Canon if I needed help. I found Pat while searching for a launch sight. We consulted on the first PDG and from there he could only advise “be flexible” in calling the additional targets for the Fly-on events.
At the first goal my drop was 224 meters, a reasonable score. Time ran out on me as I worked on the fly-in task to the field target. As the target was folded up at 8:30 A.M. I was still 3 or 4 minutes away. No result. Undaunted, I selected a fly on target, and called my crew to ask for map coordinates which had to be placed on the fly-in task marker. Like me, my crew were rookies and here we made our first rookie mistake. Instead of the map grid coordinates, they read me up the latitude, longitude coordinates. I failed to cross check the target coordinates. Naturally I had an excellent throw, 7 meters, for a score of over 950 points. But, by rule, I was given no result as my marker carried did not carry the correct set of coordinates. It was a tough pill to swallow. Ironically my radios went dead during this flight so I was forced to select and read my own coordinates for the last fly-on target. By doing so, I avoided duplicating my earlier mistake, but my brain still was not on track. After a good drop on the final target, a wide-open hay field just across the street beckoned me to “land here.” I did, though I would eventually fly on to a final landing, my intermittent stop cost me another 200 points for ground contact within 200-meters of the final goal. It had been a tough, tough morning and I never recovered from the loss of almost 1200 points.
That evening, a simple one part fly-in task was called. My drop was 7 meters and good for 7th place. After a second full day of flying and 5 more tasks, I was amazingly still in 60th place overall.
Tuesday morning and winds were near calm, though a high box existed over the field. Sherrill and staff called a minimum distance and a fly-on task. For the minimum distance you had to fly at least 30 minutes then put a marker either in the launch field scoring area or on any road on the map. Some played the box to near perfection; I did not. After an hour in the air, I was getting further and further away from the field. I radioed the crew I was coming down from 5,000+ feet to put the marker on a road, then would go on to my pilot-declared goal. I put the marker square in the center of the street, only it wasn’t on the map. (Stupid is as stupid does!) At my declared goal I dropped a short 66.5 meters from the target. Half way through my first Nationals and I was flying well, and should have scored on every task. Rule violations and less than complete concentration had cost me dearly. Four days down and four to go, I was in 71st place overall.
Wednesday morning brought renewed hope and the roller-coaster ride of emotions continued. While my minimum distance marker was not on a road shown on the map, it was within 50 meters of another road shown on the map so it qualified for a score... a small score yes, but a score.
The Wednesday morning task was a 4-parter beginning with a pilot declared goal, a Gordon Bennett Memorial at the field, and fly on that included a maximum distance double drop. This flight would cover more than 20 miles total distance taking many of the balloons completely off the supplied Boone County maps. I scored on all four targets, but another technical error cost me points. I transposed two numbers in the map grid coordinates for my fourth target making the declaration invalid...no result. Wednesday night was a mandatory night off to rest. It was early to dinner and early to bed, but I had advanced two spots to 69th position.
Thursday morning we were greeted with a pilot declared goal followed by fly-ons to two other PDGs. My first drop was 100 meters, the second just 10 meters away. It was after 10 a.m., I was still 2,000 meters from the final target and down to 30 % fuel left in all three tanks. Cumulus rain showers were building, I felt verga around me, the only winds were being generated by thermals so I decided it was time to land. I dropped the third marker and landed a short distance away. Unknown to us at the time, the flight had been canceled by race officials about 10 a.m. Only the first task was scored. I had lost my two best scores to date, 7 meters and 10 meters because of rule violations and a canceled flight.
Thursday evening the field was surrounded to the south by building thunderstorms just 25 miles away. After a short wait, the task was canceled and it was another night off to rest and recuperate.
Friday morning and time is growing short. Only three flights remain, providing we lose none to weather. Winds had been very light all week long, but this morning there was plenty of speed just above the surface. The task - a minimum distance double drop at the field, a judge declared goal at the field and then a fly on to a PDG. With wind speeds near 15 mph a few hundred feet off the surface action at the field was exciting. You had to throw three markers in a very short distance to get the maximum scores allowed. I had 7 meters on the Fly-In target (good only for 33rd place in the task) and 84 meters minimum distance (top score was 29 meters). But the best was yet to come. At my PDG, I nailed my first target of the week (or so I thought) with a .56 meter drop. It would have been closer but the marker hit an observer standing next to the target and bounced wide right.
This flight really rejuvenated my spirits as my piloting skills were sharper than ever and now the crew and I were coming together as a team. We were better prepared and worked more efficiently on this flight than any so far. It had been a week-long learning experience for a group of rookies. Now the goal was to see how far we could advance in the standings with just 24 hours left.
As we rolled out of the hotel parking lot to the Friday evening briefing thunder was crashing and lightning was flashing. A cancellation was quick in coming. The forecast also appeared to suggest that the 1996 Nationals were over. Rain was forecasted for Saturday morning, the final opportunity was gone.
Later in the evening the ups and downs of the week continued. My .56 meter drop proved to be a drop of just over 110 meters. We, and seemingly everyone else who selected the same target, had picked an intersection 100 meters too far north. As the old saying goes, were it not for bad luck, I would not have had any luck at all. The 96 Nationals were over and I finished 70th.
After two years of flying competitive tasks and with weeks of preparation and advice from top competitor Bill Bussey and past national champion Pat Cannon, I felt well prepared as I drove into Columbia. As I left, I felt every bit like the rookie I was. I had flown better than I expected, but nothing had prepared me for the amount of map work, flight planning and coordination with the crew that is required for success at the US Nationals. And then there is the rule book which is best committed to memory and carried in a hip pocket for instant reference.
I had made almost every rookie mistake possible. The early mistakes took me out of the competition and later ones thwarted any hope of a comeback. I had no illusions of winning the championship, but I had hoped to do better. Still, it was a tremendous learning experience and there is no question I’ll be back. As the week closed we all laughed about everyone having their own list of “Why I didn’t win the National Championship” excuses. Clearly I was not the only one to have experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat during the nine days of the 1996 US National Championship in Columbia, Missouri.