After their first flight on Tuesday evening, marked by unpredictable windshifts, pilots awoke on Wednesday morning hoping for a more stable situation and a substantial opportunity to pick up points for the 25th FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championship. Instead, they heard the patter of more rain as the three task flight was cancelled once again...

As they returned to the briefing area on Wednesday afternoon, they saw blue sky, promising weather and another three task flight. But that didn’t mean it would be easy.

Wednesday tasks

Director Paolo Oggioni set up the flight to test a number of different flight planning and execution abilities. Pilots had to once again select their launch location to fly into a central target, an appropriately named Fly In ('FIN'). From there, they had three potential locations on the Hesitation Waltz ('HWZ') and then a three dimensional virtual task ('3DT').

Pilots took off with winds taking them south with some left as they climbed. As only top competition ballooning can deliver, 118 balloons converge into the first target in a spectacular site of constant movement and noise as they approach, tweaking their height continuously on the way in with their powerful burners and slick vent lines. Over 75 competitors were able to get a score from their marker drops and a number more were in close proximity. 2018 World Champion Dominic Bareford of Great Britain won the task with a 1.09m gravity drop.

From there, it got more difficult. Only two pilots managed to get their markers into the HWZ targets as the expected turn wasn’t there. Two-time World Champion John Petrehn of USA won with a 34.73m toss. With so few close to the target, the graduated scoring system meant that a 200m result on this task gave 940 points whereas the same distance on the FIN would have given only 144 points.

Paul Cuenot (FRA) gets set to launch for the second flight. He finished second on the
5th task and 3rd on the 6thhelping to propel him to a 5th place in the current standings.
Credit: Cameron Balloons France

The 3DT can best be described as a doughnut. Competitors had to pick a middle point at a distance from the other targets before they launched. From there, they measured a circle of 2 kilometre radius and then another of 4 kilometres on their maps, whether physical or electronic. In this case, they were told they could spend a maximum of 45 minutes between the two circles and at a height between 1000 and 7000 feet. Thus the visual of the doughnut. Some competitors, like World’s newcomer Sébastien Poupart of Canada, noted that the wind slowed down throughout the flight. He’ll be pleased with his 15th place finish on that task, but the pilot who couldn’t be beaten was Edward Saunders: of one three siblings competing for Australia along with his brother Paterson and sister Scarlett. During his 45 minutes in the doughnut, he travelled a total of 9866m. Scarlett’s 9456m was good for 6th.

If the event’s fourth task saw balloons converge on a target, the sixth saw them
scatter beautifully across the Hungarian sky as they each set their own 3DT centre points
and navigated the donut as best they could. Credit: Australian Competition Ballooning

Szeged residents got a great view of the balloons, some of which came to land in the Northwest part of the city with many others heading to the airport that is hosting the event.

Results so far

A number of excellent pilots had difficult results meaning their climb to the podium looks more difficult with few flight windows remaining. In ballooning, consistency usually wins out - the top three pilots at present have not yet won a task - but in an event with few tasks, sometimes one bad result is enough to ruin podium hopes.

To follow the next flights in real-time and cheer on your favourite pilots, watch the innovative live-tracking tool being used by the event organisers. To find the results, visit the event page on Watch Me Fly.

After the provisional scoring of the second flight, France's Clement Seigeot remains in first place with an impressive 5692 points out of 6000 available. Swiss pilot Roman Hugi remains in second and Arthur Alleman of Belgium rounds out the podium.

Follow the competition

Throughout the week, make sure to follow along the FAI Ballooning coverage of the event and view the images from the competition via the FAI Flickr album.

Be an International Ballooning Ambassador by joining in:

1. Follow, Like & Share posts from the FAI Ballooning Facebook page.

2. If you are posting something related to the Worlds in Szeged, use the hashtags:
   #WHABC2024
   #WorldsOnAir
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   #airsports
   #Szeged
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3. FAI Ballooning YouTube Channel

Header image: Credit: Hiromi Furukawa