20th Model Balloon Meeting at Brigachtal

Brigachtal is a must! And especially when it's the 20th anniversary. So, we again travelled to the "Eldorado of Model Ballooning", this year accompanied by Bastian Schwarz, a friendly model balloonist from Landshut.

Already the check-in on Friday evening was great fun - even people who hadn't been to Brigachtal for some time had returned. 54 teams were participating altogether, more than ever.

Model ballooning is nothing for late risers: Matthias and Bastian are filling their gas bottles on Saturday - at six o'clock in the morning!

Both of the flights on Saturday morning were a combination of a hare and hounds race and a fly-in to the centre line of a road, with Michael Bölling being the hare with his Dinkelacker balloon, just as usual ;-)

In brilliant sunshine, the 54 model balloons took to the sky - a fantastic picture for all those who had the time to enjoy it. The pilots, however, had to do a lot, fulfilling their tasks while trying to avoid collision with other balloons - that's not so easy with such a crowd of colourful bubbles around!

The number of special shapes was also quite stunning - apart from the blue Elephant and our Penguin, there was the panda, an apple, an octopus, a dog and two clowns.

What might the Penguin have whispered to the Elephant? We'll never know! ;-)

Hit the road we did only on the second flight - on the first one there was no getting near it. Nevertheless, the dry road between the wettish meadows was a welcome place to pack the balloons.

This balloon had quite an unpleasant landing site - it took several hours to rescue it from the big tree, with the help of the auxiliary fire brigade and a long, long ladder.

On Saturday afternoon, it was the "Limbo Rodeo" - a rope between two poles had to be touched by a steamer attached to the balloons' basket. The second task was a fly-in to a road again.

And this can be quite a crowd, with over fifty model balloons trying to get the best place to take off! Once this task was mastered, we had to run - after leaving the lee of the trees, the balloons began to speed up like crazy!

Such a Penguin is comfortable: After the endurance run over the fields, the two girls from the Knechtel Balloon Team used our bird to have a rest.

Unfortunately, it was "no result" for him in this flight - by mistake, he didn't touch the rope, but the ground, and that is normally rated as the end landing.

The nightglow, which took place at the childrens' hospital at Tannheim just like the years before, was a very special highlight: For the introduction of the little clown balloon of Sven Grenzner (on the right), its "e;big brother" had come from the city of Freiburg to participate in the event.

At the first flight on Sunday morning, the skirmish of the coloured bubbles reached its climax. A road had to be touched with the steamer hanging from the balloons' baskets. In a big bunch, the balloons approached the target line.

Where is the Penguin???

Again, he wasn't quite lucky at this task - when he had finally reached the target, two balloons were flying beneath him, making it impossible for him to touch down.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun, even between the flights - model balloonists really are a funny crowd... *g*

Is this still a model balloon? Andreas Schmiauke in his new basket - only the burner and the appropriate envelope are missing.

The second flight on Sunday turned out to be a hare and hounds race again. In the front, you can see the balloons of Werner (left, orange/yellow) and Bastian (right, green/yellow), who had gained quite some points during the competition.

The Penguin seemed to be less interested in that - he preferred to play around with the other balloons, here with the "SKY" balloon of Klaus-Dieter Jahnke.

Two model balloon pilots will definitely keep in mind these Sunday morning flights: During to interference or technical failure, the burners of their balloons didn't turn off any more, and they rose away, until all the gas inside the bottles had been burned.

Luckily, both balloons could be regained only some hours later with the help of local people.

In the end, everyone gathered again for the prizegiving. As we expected, Matt and his Penguin landed somewhere further down on the list, while Bastian made an excellent 7th rank - not bad for his first time at Brigachtal. Congratulations! :-)

And that is the winners' picture of the 20th Model Balloon Meeting at Brigachtal!
From left to right, standing: Organizer Richard Bölling, Rob Worsmann (Scotland, longest journey), Niels Hivd (Denmark, also best European participant), Nils Wilhelm (Germany, also best youth) and Hendrik Vedel Jorgensen (Denmark).
Sitting: Bernard and Jerome Bilquey (both France).

The ranking of the 20th Model Balloon Meeting at Brigachtal:

rank	balloon	pilot	points
1	D-ONILS	Nils Wilhelm	5903,0
2	Vedel	Niels Hivd	5366,7
3	Dansk FolkeFerie	Hendrik Vedel Jorgensen	5034,4
4	FFAM	Bernard Bilquey	4623,0
5	multicoloured	Jerome B.	4588,8
6	D-MAREN	Roger Wilhelm	4425,2
7	D-OABS	Bastian Schwarz	4087,4
8		Fabio Taroni	4021,6
9	Flower Fly	Ralf Kursch	3616,0
10		Herve & Patricia Lemaire	3487,8
11	Martifant	Martin Eutermoser	3472,0
12	Kieselbronn	Jan & Andrea Gloß	3449,9
13		Patrick & Mathieu Deko	3290,0
14	LX-HIP	Ben Schaack	3067,7
15	OO-BOE-tje	Luc De Wulf	2988,4
16	D-OWMS	Werner Schlegel	2974,2
17	ICKLE GIGLE	Rob Worsmann	2971,2
18	Warsteinchen	Sebastian Bölling	2787,0
19	D-OMIK	Michael Kampmann	2701,0
20	D-OHEXE	Maren Wilhelm	2609,4
21		Marcel Prevotat	2607,2
22	SKY	Klaus-Dieter Jahnke	2501,2
23	D-OFEUER	Frank Schnelle	2468,5
24	Let'z Fätz	Rainer Vogler	2468,4
25		Ludovic Larere	2415,0
26	badenova	Istvan Csernik	2390,0
27	D-OLEG	Sven Grenzner	2300,0
28	Penguin	Matthias Schlegel	2237,7
29		Andy Booth	1886,7
30	multicoloured	Markus Höpfler	1872,7
31	D-OJUM	Matthias Leister	1867,0
32	D-OMEY	Alexander Schmiauke	1794,0
33		Jürgen Meier	1778,0
34	Warsteiner	Rainer Stiller	1702,0
35		Cor Bennaars	1652,0
36		Roland Gminder	1613,0
37	Clown	Christian Navarre	1602,9
38		Wolfgang Leibfritz	1552,0
39	Dinkelacker	Michael Bölling	1500,0
40	ZickZackLogo	Olaf Schneider	1399,0
41	DoDo	Richard Alt	1307,0
42	black/orange	Martin Kaiser	1305,0
43	Lößnitztal	Karsten Knechtel	987,0
44		Claude Vergon	948,0
45		Alan & Helen Freeland	500,0
		Peter Kelder	500,0
	Panda	Andreas Schmiauke	500,0
46	multicoloured	Eberhardt Leibfritz	0,0
	G-HONY	David Thomas	0,0
	D-OKEV	Josef Balzen	0,0
		Riccardo Giambrone	0,0
	LX-RYE	Fernand Schaack	0,0
	PH-geert-2	Geert Plukker	0,0
		Stefan Rupp	0,0

(No points were given for the start this year.)

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