CHAMPAGNE TALES

                                                               February 2006

 

Published almost monthly by the

Greater Mesilla Valley Aerostat Ascension Association

P.O.Box 279

Fairacres, New Mexico  88033

President: Orbin Stone

Vice President: Sherry Richardson

Secretary: Burt Whirry

Treasurer:   Janette Stone

Editor-with-help:   Patrick Scoggin

 

 

 

The Accolades and Achievements of

the Greater Mesilla Valley Aerostat Ascension Association

 

 

Next Meeting

10 April 2005 at 6:30 pm

Mesilla Valley Inn

 

From the Presidents Corner

Ok here’s the message from Orbie, Ok not really but hey you guys he’s been busy, real busy. So instead of including the one from last month and see if any of you catch it I will just add something.  And you know sometimes I get pretty busy and confused and if he does send one in I on occasion may lose it so for a time so anyway what he would have said is something like this.

Go fly a balloon.

                                                                        Orbin Stone

                                                                        President     GMVAAA

Greater Mesilla Valley Aerostat Ascension Association

GMVAAA Minutes

 


March 13, 2006 GMVAAA Meeting
6:30 pm, Mesilla Valley Inn

Members Present:
Orbin and Janette Stone, Jeanne Gartner, Burt Whirry, Barney Watson, Marta Rose, JR Turner, Patrick Scoggin, Jeff and Vicky Shaw, Patti Havstad, Joan and Lance and Brian Smith, Douglas Jackson

Call to Order 6:30pm
Previous minutes approved.

Treasurer Report:
Current Balance            $  2,534.53 no changes
Report Accepted as presented.


Committee Reports:


PZ : Possible new PZ field corner of University and Stafford, unsure of actual property ownership.


PR:

Texas Road House interested in a continued relationship with the Rally.
Fly -Ins:

Bang Tail 30 April, KLAQ looking for pilots 27-28 May, Father’s Day 18 June, Larry and Rita Albanse residence. Pool party 2 July Patti Havstad’s.
Safety Seminar: Proposed date 24 June. Instructors need to submit syllabus.


Old Business:

None


New Business:

Club roster is in the works.


Adjourn:

7:30

 

 

Bangtail Muster

submitted by Patti Havstad

According to the on-line dictionary, www.wiktionary.org , the meaning of Bangtail is “docking the tail of cattle” and the meaning of muster is “a roundup”. Bangtail Muster originated in Australia as a roundup of cattle during which  the end of their tail hairs were cut straight across to ensure they had been counted for transportation. Somewhere along the line, the Bangtail Muster evolved into an official holiday in Alice Springs, Australia where it has been a favorite May festival for over 25 years. A web search found the Bangtail Muster described as “A day for nutty parades and outback silliness”.

The Las Cruces version of the Bangtail Muster, for which Bangtail means something like “shocking the frail of society” (not for the average prude), and Muster clearly means “party”, has been a popular party day for certain groups of Las Crucens for almost as long as the Australian version (see the historical story below, provided by Ruth Byers). The Las Cruces version can be described as nutty, fun, silliness, dress-up, and frivolity all on the banks of the Rio Grande.

For many years, the party has begun with the launching of a handful of hot air balloons in the early morning hours near the party site (just south of the Picacho Bridge). While the balloonists are embracing the early spring day aloft, local Aussies, members of the local British Motor Car Club, and other Bangtail Muster loyalists arrive in their Bentleys and other vintage vehicles and begin to set up tables with fine linen and crystal goblets. Dressed to the nines, ladies in carefully chosen fancy dresses and men in various versions of the classic tuxedo, set up their finely appointed tables with copious amounts of delectable food and treats. After the balloons have landed and are packed away, the balloonists also don their fancy party dress, lay out additional tables, and adorn them with even more delectable treats. The champagne is uncorked, and the frivolities begin.

The official Bangtail Muster holiday is the first Monday in May. As the rotating of the earth would have it, Australia is well into their Monday at the same time that we here in siesta- land are still enjoying our leisurely Sunday. Hence, the celebration here is traditionally held on the first Sunday before the first Monday in May. This year, May 1 falls on Monday, meaning that the traditional Las Cruces Bangtail Muster would be scheduled for Sunday, April 30.

So - When is Bangtail??

Stay tuned, as we may take the unprecedented step of moving our Bangtail party to the next Sunday, May 7, to avoid conflict with an event the British Motor Car Club has already scheduled for the weekend of April 29-30. Consultation with the Aussie contingency is in progress regarding this possibility! However, I suspect the traditional date of April 30 will hold.

 

There is a new Balloon in town,

 

And she is a beaut!  That’s right folks, Midnight Angel Too is finally here!  On April 1st Midnight flew the skies of Las Cruces, and she did not want to stop.  We inflated her in Mayfield’s parking lot.  Orbie had warned me that we probably would not fly, we needed to get used to her and learn how her top worked.  She is a learning experience for all.  Students, crew and our instructor (Orbie Stone) have never flown a balloon with a “Smart Vent” before.  It is a little strange because there are a whole lot of cables in the top to contend with, and of course the manual that came with the new envelope does not even mention the “Smart Vent!”

Well, it did not take us long to figure out how to put the top in and stand her up.  After playing with the top a little while we figured out how it went together…thanks to Jeff Shaw.  At one point while putting the top in, Orbie told me to turn the fan down.  Again, thanks to Jeff Shaw, we have a fan that will inflate Midnight at idle!

Well, after we had her inflated she was so beautiful Orbie just could not resist.  He decided to fly her to our amazement and delight.  He and I took off and began Midnight’s maiden flight.  She was catching everyone’s eye and commanded the skies.  She WANTED to fly!  Every time Orbie would point out a place, in a direction we were headed, that looked like a good landing spot, the winds would change. 

Finally after a 45-minute flight across Las Cruces, we came down behind the dam behind Home Depot.   Of course the winds had picked up as if she was out to prove herself.  Orbie decided to use the smart vent and see if it worked as reported.  We hit the ground at a very good clip with Orbie pulling the red line.  As the envelope quickly deflated Orbie’s smile got bigger and bigger.  By the time Midnight was flat on the ground, about 25 seconds, his smile was ear to ear.  In fact, Midnight had deflated so fast our 4 chase vehicles had no idea where we were!

When they finally found us, after a few cell phone calls, the REAL fun began.  We put the balloon back in the bag and loaded the truck up.  I was properly christened, with all kinds of different liquids, as it was my first time to fly in my balloon.

Then, since Midnight is a Family balloon, a fun time was had by all!

 

(NOTE: ok the original had photos. Realy nice colorful photos. But there was a problem. If technical stuff and submitting photos are or interest to you see the ‘from the editor’ stuff at the end)

 

 

 

BFA Competition Committee

Update 03/15/2006

 

The BFA Competition Committee met in Houston, Texas in February.  A number of important decisions were made.  The Committee approached the tasks at hand with a great deal of dedication and enthusiasm.  The Committee discussed the subjects of improving BFA competition, increasing the number of pilots in the National Ranking list, and conveying to the general population of balloon pilots that BFA competition is for EVERYONE.  Not just for the pilots that have a desire to attend the World Championships, but also for the weekend rally pilots who want to learn more about competition, and possibly improve their flying skills. With the failed attempt to unify NABA and BFA competition behind us, the Committee looked inward to see what can be done to improve the product offered to BFA hot air balloon competitors.

 

The following is a summary of some of the new ideas that will be implemented this year, as well as some traditional benefits to our members.

 

  • A fund of $15,000 has been set-aside for the 2006 World Team and manager, to be used to help offset expenses in Japan.
  • A fund of $2,000 has been set-aside for the USA observers attending the 2006 World Championships.
  • For this year, anyone that has never purchased, or has not purchased a competition task card within the last 5 years can purchase his or her competition card for $10.00. This also includes a FREE CD of all the competition articles written in Ballooning by Pat Cannon
  • Everyone purchasing a 2006 BFA competition card will receive the free CD.
  • In 2006, new awards will be given out relating to the National Ranking list; they will include, Points Champion, Highest Ranking Rookie, Highest Ranking Female, Highest Ranking Senior Pilot (over 55), and the Most Improved Pilot.

These awards will be in the form of wall plaques, and will be presented at the awards ceremony at Fiesta in October. These awards will start now, and are for the 2005 competition year.

  • Starting in 2007, for the 2006 competition year, a cash award system will be in place. All of the above-mentioned awards will receive $300.00, except for the points champion; he or she will be receiving $500. Additional monetary awards will go all the way down to 20th place on the National Ranking list. In addition, the top 10 places will also receive wall plaques.  To date, the points fund for 2006 is based on $5,000
  • A press release will be issued for each State Champion to their local newspaper, and each will receive a State Championship Certificate from the BFA.
  • The BFA web site will establish a competition page for rally results with photos, articles, news, year to date point totals for all BFA competitors, etc.
  • More space will be dedicated to both Skylines and Ballooning magazine, with more rally reporting.
  • A Competition Education Program will be developed that can be used at safety seminars. Trained education speakers could be provided to teach the program.
  • A “mentor program” will be developed that will allow less experienced competitors to crew with “veteran” competitors to learn the trade. In addition, they will coordinate debriefings at balloon rallies to openly discuss tasks, flight profiles and to critique flight mistakes.
  • A new user-friendly Windows based scoring program is under development.  It will be on a CD, and shared with any balloon rally wishing to host balloon competition.
  • The 2006 US Nationals in Anderson, SC, will have $20,000 in prize money. Prize money will be paid to all 40 competitors.  In addition, $7,500 will be set-aside in an escrow account that will assist the 2008 World Championship Team.
  • The 2006 US Nationals will use pre-selected map goals, and a list of coordinates will be issued to each pilot. This will greatly reduce the amount of pre-event work required on the maps.
  • A new rule was established that would make it easier for any BFA competition pilot to acquire points at any competition rally. In the past at least 6 BFA competition pilots were required in order to turn in scores to the office for tabulation.  The new rule will read in part; if there are more than 6 BFA pilots and they want to have their points count in the National Ranking list, the points are based on how each pilot finished against the “6”. If there are less than six pilots with BFA task cards, and they want to have their points count toward the National system, the entire pilot list is to be submitted and the points for the BFA pilots will be based on their finish against the entire field. This new rule, for BFA sanctioned events, will allow pilots who are in an area with few BFA competition pilots to still obtain national points and be counted toward the BFA National Ranking list and the awards program.
  • There will be NO COST to weekend rallies for a BFA sanction. A sanction includes non-owned aircraft insurance coverage for the balloon officials acting on behalf of BFA.
  • The BFA CC will be purchasing more GPS trackers this year to increase our inventory, and will be working on software to use these trackers in our competition. The 2008 Worlds Hot Air Balloon Championship in Austria will not be using observers, so we must be ready to use our trackers in our 2007 Nationals. The Committee feels that we must prepare our Worlds team for the type of flying they will encounter when they compete at the World level.

 

The Competition Committee is serious about increasing and improving competition ballooning in the USA. If you have any questions regarding any of these issues or would like to volunteer for any of the programs, please contact a Competition Committee member in your Region.


 Philip Bryant, Sanction Manager                     Balloon Federation of America
 Competition Committee                                      5001 Woodway #302
www.ballooningtexas.com                                  Houston, TX  77056
                                                                                713-622-9074

 



 

Schedule of Events 2006

Barney sent me a nice list of events we will include in the next letter… I hope.

 

 

Note from the Editor-with-help,

I want to thank everyone who contributed to this newsletter. The newsletter does not happen without your input.

 

SO ok… why the silly stick figures? File issues. The normal newsletter is about 300-400 Kilobytes in size. When I formatted this issue I inserted the word document that was sent to me ‘as is’ and them just adjusted the size of the last to photos to fit side by side in Microsoft Word 2002.  The size right off the bat was 17000 Kilobites. The issue was the photos as they seemed to be of very high resolution. I tried taking the photos out of the word document into Photoshop to adjust the resolution. Problem was they were in a native format to an embedded MS Word document and fell apart when imported into Photoshop so that did not work. I converted to Black and White but the file size remained the same.

 

So I tired sending the newsletter via Gmail vs NMSU mail thinking the file size might work better there but no luck. In the end I ‘reformatted’ the photos to a more primitive form and got the file size back to a reasonable size.

 

In the future I would like to be able to include Photos and in color BUT I need to have the photos NOT imbedded in a work processor and sent to me as jpegs of gifs or some standard photo format so I can manipulate them. ( resolution of more than 220 lines/dots per inch is useless for a zeroxed newsletter and anything more than 72 not much use for viewing on a computer/web etc. (unless you are  trying to zoom in and read someone’s watch in the photo). This would make file size a lot smaller. I can reformat to the lower resolutions for you but it has to be in a standard photo format.

 

So after all that here’s this issue after a lot of experimentation and the next one should follow soon. I hope.