This year, more than 50 hot air balloons of various colours and shapes from all over the world came to the heart of Slovácko again. Even pilots from Australia and Japan flew in to measure their strength in ballooning competitions and enjoy great entertainment and a rich accompanying program (Martin Harich or Queen revival played).
Check out video, what it looked like:
Video from FB Balloon Championship
The program sounded great, so my colleagues and I headed to Uherské Hradiště to enjoy this awesome annual event. We've all been ballooning before and we are barons and baronesses from different parts of the country, yet ballooning is still a bit of magic for us.
How are balloons controlled?
One visitor to the championships expressed our feelings quite aptly, "I don't understand how they can compete in these balloons, they all fly according to where the wind is blowing, don't they? The most they can do is go up and go up or go down and go down, but they don't turn like cars and they don't have a steering wheel so they don't turn..."
Although it sounds incredible, there is world-class racing in ballooning. From August 28 to September 1, pilots from all over the world competed for the title in a total of 19 disciplines given by the rules, mostly distance or target flights. Sometimes it's about flying the greatest or the smallest distance in a given time, sometimes it's about landing exactly at the destination or hitting the target with your marker (like a bag). The best pilots can control a flight of more than an hour so that they hit the target with centimetre accuracy. How? The basic principle is to find the correct wind direction at different altitudes. This is done by climbing or descending.
"After tens, hundreds, and thousands of hours of flying in the basket, one can already plan and predict where the best place to climb or descend is to get the wind direction they need. It's all about practice and knowing how the airflow works. Then you just collect trophies :-) " explained one pilot. And trophies he did indeed collect...
Photo: FB Balloon Championships
The highlight of Friday night was the evening light show, or the gradual lighting of balloons to the sound of music. This was probably our favourite. After a short fire show, the balloons began to light up one by one, first one, then two.... then finally all at once. A magical spectacle. Like giant lanterns.
Although the weather was not good and our morning sunrise flight was eventually cancelled (you just can't fly in a storm), we really enjoyed the balloon championship and we are looking forward to next year again!
