Inaugural flight goes great

Today started with great weather and after collecting our balloon yesterday we were keen to give it the first flight today. The balloon is a brand new Cameron TR 70 racer direct from the factory. Oh, the joys of being a factory team.

We launched around 7am in front of a lovely castle-sports school establishment and got to learning the characteristics of this fabulous racer.

The winds early were great, going in every direction. A couple of low level tactics and trial targetting and we were mighty impressed. With its gold trim we reckon this balloon has winning potential at next week's Worlds.

Backing up this arvo we were on hold pending a pre-frontal weather system. After figuring the locals were just wimps Mike Howard from the UK and Paul launched and started the run. Again the weather was actually great and we had another fantastic flight. We navigated to our farmhouse, stopped and collected our host's daughter for a long hop over to the next town and another couple of trial marker drops. Deano was especially happy about this as he got to leave the balloon and resume his erratic driving on terra firma.

That's enough flying for today and with rain expected overnight we off for a beer or two.