No, we were not lucky with the weather in Altötting this year. After it had rained
on Friday, on Saturday it was the wind which kept us from taking out our balloons.
But we were lucky enough to have Robby, Sabine and Tamara from the 'Albflyer' kiting team
with us, and their kites and wind socks were much fun to play with.
And some of us model balloonists soon felt inspired by the Albflyers' big football
to use their envelope as a wind sock - here Thomas Laux and his model.
BTW: Thanks to Martin Kaiser and Bernd Schwab for the pictures :-)
In the afternoon, the sun came out, and we went to put up Bastian Schwarz' new model balloon in the lee of some trees.
Angelika, Bastian's mother, had sewn together the entire envelope, somedays 'til
late in the evening, to make sure it was completed just in time.
Thus, she also had the honour to 'baptise' the balloon with champagne and give it
the name 'D-OABS'.
Lift off for maiden flight! Due to the wind, this was quite a short and quick ride!
Unfortunately, as the wind didn't calm down just before sunset, we couldn't carry out
any flights for the contest.
Anyway, it would have been rather impossible to honour a winner -
last year's winner Bernd Schwab had forgotten to bring back the challenge trophy ;-)