Hot Air Balloon Racing
Published by admin on April 17th, 2008 in General, Hot Air Balloon Flights, Balloon Flight Gifts, Balloon Events
Balloon races are popular all over the world, particularly during the summer months. Many people often ask how hot air balloons race. Balloons don’t ‘race’ in the normal sense of the word and it is not a case of first across the finish line wins.
Hot air balloon racing usually entails a range of strategic and complex tasks that the pilots must accomplish, normally consisting of dropping weights on pre-determined targets. Since the balloon simply drifts in the wind and balloon pilots do not have direct control over the direction that they fly in, many competition pilots have become very skilled in reading the winds to get them close to the targets.
A large fabric X about 50 foot in diameter is placed a few miles away from the launch site and the balloons take it in turns to take off, get as close to the target as possible and drop their marker. The closest marker achieves the highest score. The competition consists of numerous drops during the meet with the highest overall score declared the winner.
