Balloon Fiesta; Balloon Fiesta 46

Let me just jump and check that if I don't know how to get started. Anyway, let's still try to figure out what the best thing is. Actually, I think at probably one of the best we had done was given these stuffed animals. It was just, it's incredible to watch a kid in the wheelchair and somebody giving stuff Zebra and I'd say it was amazing. Where all this stuff comes from? Oh, all the buttons? I've made buttons, collected buttons, you just collect stuff, like I say, you're around. We'll go to the zoo today and we'll go in and look for Zebra stuff. See what they've got. Hats, anything, shirts, they sell, I sell a lot of Zebra stuff. Things striped you can come up with. So how long have you had this Zebra addiction?

14 years already and each year it gets closer to retirement, then it starts back again and you really don't want to retire. You come out and have way too much fun. Now it's something you get addicted to it like you say and you just want to keep on doing it. It's kind of, here's an addiction, it's too much fun. Turn this off for a second. What else can we talk about? Do you have a favorite part of the Fiesta? I mean, I know you talk about people, but I'm like when you see the bones that I'm in as you're just. Oh, favorite days. Favorite days are always key grab day and all the balloons take off, we'll have your special shapes on the field, everybody else takes off outside of the field for the competition

for key grab day. And there's maybe 10 or 11 of us and they're not going to keep grab. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually what they've got as poles up there. Oh, I'm sorry, I was confused that yesterday was, well what was yesterday? Yesterday was just a competition where they throw baggies on them, more targets out here on the field. How does that work? Well, they have to fly in task and what they'll do is they'll come out and set up little markers on the field and I think that was Texas Holdham is what they call it. And they'll set up cards, oh, maybe four by five cards out on the field, they'll fly in, throw a bag, you know, as close as you can get to it and score them, you know, to the center of it.

And that's what the competition was for yesterday. I was down there and there was the cards out to the side, but I was at a big X, they have that too. There's all sorts of different, you know, competitions like that. And like I say, I'm sorry, what's the X on the field? It's just just an X where you throw your baggie closest to the center still. So does that give you an extra prize or something? No. It gives you points and you've got an accumulative points till you get to the end and first place with accumulative points when it's a motorcycle, a Harley motorcycle, and then you go on your prizes down, they have quite a few prizes. What are some of the prizes? Money and just different gifts they've come up with and like I said, really everybody keeps up with who gets first prize for the Harley motorcycle on that. Second prize, I think might be cash, I'm not sure.

How do you put the points together? They're all, I can say they've got the scores and the judges out there and they just add up, you know, the baggies are all marked with the banner numbers. And so say if you're five foot ten from the center of it, you get, you know, so many points for being the closest and that's, you know, how they do that, whoever is closest and farthest out, you know, on that. So the closest person gets, say 100 points, next one out, farther out, you know, gets less points, but that's how, you know, that works on that. Let's get back to the zebra part of this, I was going to ask you, how are we want, but what's the camaraderie? Like what happens when you guys get together? Well, it starts out as a real fun time, everybody meets over here in the landing five o'clock, five fifteen and that's kind of the fun time, get everybody here, get everybody

started, whatever annex you want to pull, we kind of get those out of the way. Come over here at five thirty, we have a meeting, you know, with our briefing. It's weather, what we're supposed to be doing that day, if we've got any special events and the other problems we have, we go over all of that. And from there, it's just a lot of people just getting together, saying two or three rows over, making sure we're all coordinated, you know, how we're going to do our launch. And you kind of just keep everything, you know, together where you're not out of somebody's sight, but you can still see everybody. And the camaraderie is like the other day, one girl's radio wasn't working. So it was like a massive hunt to find out if anything, it happened to her. And all it was was a radio quit working. And that's a lot of the camaraderie, you know, if something happens to someone, everybody's

looking. And it's not just one or two launch directors, it's, you get thirty or forty of them looking for somebody on something like that, because you want to make sure something hadn't happened to them, you know, and what's the energy like when you all get together in the morning? And the ten over there is quite lively when you come over here, it's just as bad. Well, too much fun at times. And yeah, I think you've better let out some of that energy before you get to the field, because when you get out there and you start your launch, it turns from being fine or funny into a very serious time until you get all your balloons launched. But in here, there's a lot of joking going on and everything else. See, it's... You have a lot of scenes and stuff like, you know, everybody knows what to say at the right time. Or the wrong thing to say at the right time. We all kind of stick our foot in our mouths every once in a while.

Some people don't say anything. I tend to just never shut up and try to keep it going. You've got it, you've got to keep the fun in it. How many hours a day do you work? Oh, I will, like I say, get here at five, we'll work to ten. And then if we have an evening event, you'll get out here, work at three, three to maybe nine that night and go home and try to get up at three or three thirty the next morning. You can put in a lot of hours and wait too many at times. Oh, yeah, you've got to have fun. Okay. How do you feel about the people you work with? Love them all. They are all really good people. If you start in news, zit, you're fairly quiet.

Sometimes you'll take a zit and find out how much they can take. See what their limits are. Just keep pushing it. And by about the third day, they're all having fun too. They're seeing how it works. You've got to push it just to make them have fun, some of them. I'm doing a favorite, I'm telling you, a zebra is a launch director and gets the blooms up safely. And as zit is, it's the first year or second, let's say the whole thing for me, except from zebra to zit. Oh, zebra is been here for more than two years. A zit is the first year or second year launch director in training. And your first year, you're walking with a regular launch director just to find out what's going on, how it's done, and the process of becoming a launch director.

Your second year as a zit, you're just basically starting to launch and still more training. Your third year, you're an official launch director where you can go out launch balloons in your row on your own, or with the help of another launch director. What's it like for you when you're launching a balloon? I mean, what kind of thrill do you get out of that? Seeing the pilot smile, seeing the riders who he's got, seeing them with all the smiles, and the enthusiasm, they have just flying over this is pretty nice. Just seeing people happy out here, having a good time. That's what thrill is here? Oh, yeah. Doesn't take much. If I was just hoping you would say that's what thrills me. Well, that's really it does thrill me, and actually, it's hard to say it's hard to

explain unless you're actually launching a balloon. When you see someone taking off, you can see how happy they are. I'm just thrilled they're gone and out of here safely. Okay. Anything else you want to say? No. The guy with the jacket, Bob? Robert. Robert. What's his title? He's Chief Launch Director. So what's the job of the Chief Launch Director? Coordinating all the Chief Launch Director is. Oh, Chief Launch Director? His job is coordinating through a section leaders with safety, with balloon fiesta, with us. He coordinates basically with everybody out here on the field in order to get everything, you know, running right.

He has a really, really important job, and it is time consuming. He works year-round on it. I'm just looking at your stuff on your shirt. Oh, okay. I look okay. Yep. You got a lot of stuff. I don't wear half of it. I think it's a little zebra in shoulder there. It's just flopped over. That's why I didn't go for him. I think it's going to give more of a close up to this. You can't believe it. Okay. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Okay. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Okay. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Okay. Now you know at least a good 10 seconds.

Let's see what we can talk. It must be tired after nine days. Oh, it's exhausting. It really is. You're out here so much and most of those take vacations for this and try to get other stuff done around your house. It just, it takes a lot out of getting that early in the morning. But it's got to be fun though. It really is. Just incredible. And I'd say the people you meet out here, the launch directors, just meeting some of those are just some of us just go a little bit overboard. Really. How could you possibly be going overboard dressed like that? You didn't see me in my skirt and tights this morning. It is not a pretty sight. Yeah. But it's, it's the fun. I've got nine days out here.

I can pretty much do what I want to do. I have as much fun as I need to. Doesn't last near long enough, but it is just. Just something else. You ought to come out in without this and just come out and be a spectator. It's amazing. Cool. Let's see. Got it. Cool. Thank you, sir. Okay. There's a whole bunch of these four apartments coming. I think they can get away a little bit better with stuff. Yeah. I think we're 10. We're 10. Oh, you think you're happy? Well, I. Are you catching a lot off that floor? I'm just trying to lose that box. That's better. Yeah, but. But. I see it up there. Is it angle of incidence equals angle of reflectance? This is our high tech in five minutes.

I'll change. Okay. Ready. Hi there. Welcome back. What's the morning briefing about? There's several briefings that we go through are our morning briefing for the launch directors as to give them the order of the day. What kind of things may have changed if there's a weather change, if there's a launch change. Launches are pretty set based on the Fiesta Street. You know, the weekends are a mass ascension through the weaker competitive events. There's the variety or the special shapes with flying tasks with a little variable in there. And that's when we give them that information. If there's something that they need to pass on that they've heard, they'll give that to us. There's actually the morning briefing and then we have a debrief when we're done. Just to gather information, any kind of problems that may have occurred, any other issues. I'm a little worried that your hands are just kind of sitting there. Should we give you a give it up?

You're right. Yeah. How hard is that meeting? What's that, what is the importance of that contact? The importance of the first meeting is also a starting focus. It gets everybody it's early. It gets everybody kind of in the mindset of, okay, here we go. It's time. It's ready. Here's what our event's going to be. And if it's going to be a little different than the norm and gives them a little heads up. Things can change here instantaneously. And we all see it. This particular group has changes that are very proactive. We'll start out with a northerly flow wind taking us to the south. And within seconds, that can change to the east to the west or completely reverse. So this group has to react. And it's really important in that morning briefing to give them as much of a heads up about what might change as we possibly can. What's the box? The Albuquerque box.

Our unique little valley here. The air masses get cold up in the mountains. The moussandias here, it's angered the crystals up north. And as that cold air migrates down, comes down through our valley. This time of year the predominant winds, the regular flow is from the south to the north. But that cold wind kind of slips in underneath. So we have a flow going on the ground to the south. And as a balloon climbs, it can catch that wind going back north again. So literally you can create a box effect. You can fly low and go south, go up a little bit, travel back north, come back down, go south again. And it's called a box effect. That's a fun thing. Anytime that you can go back from where you started in the hot air balloon, that's a fun thing. And pilots from all over enjoy that because it's unique to this valley. There are some other places that have some unique flying conditions.

The red rocks out in Gallup. There's a rotor effect wind there where you can go out over the rotor and come back and forth. But here you could literally travel a mile or two down south and come back three or four miles. And come back down and come right back from where you started on an ideal day. There's some steerage here. You can pretty much pick where you want to go on a good day. Let me see. I didn't want to take the jacket off if it kicks back. Okay. Um, pilots, pilots pilots. What do you want to know about pilots? What do people need to know about pilots? Well, let me promise what people need to know about pilots is that I have a pilot. I have flown, I've flown special shapes, I've flown regular, I've flown competitive. What do they need to know about pilots?

Little different birds sometimes. Uh, pilots have a unique approach to many different problems. They have a tendency to have their own mindset. Most of them are just really marvelous people. All of them are really marvelous people. I think what happens is they get into a situation that they may not be as familiar with. I kind of control, you know, wanting to be in control aspect comes out some can be a little difficult to deal with. The ones that we run across here for the most part are absolutely marvelous. I think they appreciate what we do. I think they see what we do is extraordinarily important for them as well as the event. And they're all highly cooperative. Sometimes things are a little dicey out there. They can get a little intense, but overall there's a real good group of people. So where are they from?

Who are they? What kind of personality is the pilot? Can you tell us something about those? I don't know that there's any kind of niche or novel you could put a pilot into. We accept pilots as launch directors, obviously, since I was a pilot. For us, pilots are a little hundred trained because they always want to be a little more proactive as they see a launch go on. As far as where they come from, you see pilots again from all walks of life. They've got, you know, ductards out there. We've got medical professionals out there. We've got plumbers. We've got auto mechanics. There's no category for them. I mean, they're just folks that enjoy a little adventure. And hunter-blending is a little adventure. It's like a lot of adventure. Michael, we got to sit off of any of this stuff. Want to look at him?

Yeah. All right, tell me about mass ascension. What are the people who, how many balloons are there? And what are people who really need to know about a mass ascension? What's interesting? A mass ascension. That's mass ascension. Mass ascension. That's kind of the crown jewel of balloon fiesta. That's where everybody gets to come and play from one field. It's crowded. Trying to launch a lot of balloons in a relatively short period of time. We do it in waves. We divide them up in half and launch the first half and launch the second half. Our field is large enough here that we have the opportunity to have three separate sections and we'll launch the south section and our section to bring an ideal day at the same time. And the middle section and repeat.

Putting a lot of aircraft in the air. It's really, it's an unbelievable sight to be able to sit on the ground. And it's an unbelievable sight from the air. I think that's the real attraction to be able to be in the air with that many other pilots that many other aircraft and to be on the ground watching them all and watching them take off. It's truly amazing. It's something that you're not going to find everywhere. How many balloons? This year we're a little thin. We're a little thin. Not too bad. We've had 700 aircraft here. I'm starting off by saying we're a little thin. How many aircraft? There's over 600 this year. We've had over 700, but 600 is still a pretty awesome sight. We can get everybody in the air at once.

The sky kind of sparkles. That's a fun thing to do. Excuse me. It's holding back to calm. All right. I'm a balloon glows. Special shake glows. Special shake glows. The hot air balloon glows. Those are really an entertainment, a crowd pleaser. The pilot's like to do it because it gives them the opportunity to stay on the ground and talk to the crowd. Talk to the people that are brave enough to come up and say hi. We really like your balloon. We really like your colors because they really like that compliment. Again, the awe inspiration that comes in when everybody fires off those burners all at once. You can feel it. You can feel the crowd, their appreciation of it.

But when you're attuned to it, you can feel the rush of the air. You can literally feel the wind that's created from that burn and the sight, the glow that it creates on the ground. And even as you stand back and you see the balloons themselves light up candles inside of globes, it's just beautiful. Again, it's an experience that you don't get anywhere else. You just won't find it. Too many favorite special shapes. Favorite special shapes. I think my favorite special shapes would have to be the ones that I've actually flown. But the newer ones, the ones that are out here now that I'm going to have to go with balloons like Darth Vader that are exemplifying a theme. Are you cutting? It helps. It really does help. Rola.

You know, I put this on here on the side, you like to set this as your color. The... Is there a difference between flying a regular balloon versus a special shape balloon? And if there is, what is that? The difference in a special shape and a regular balloon depends on the shape. There's a lot of shapes out there that emulate a regular balloon. They just have some appendages on them. They'll fly pretty much like a regular balloon. You get to balloons like the stagecoach or that cathedral that are truly outside of the norm, outside of what would be considered a regular shape balloon. And they'll react differently to the wind. They'll react differently to throttle, to the hot air that you put into them. And so there's a little bit more of a learning curve to learn how to deal with your aircraft. Give me some specifics. What do you have to be prepared for? Well, in a regular shape balloon, the real difference is that in a wind it will tend to travel with the wind. In a special shape balloon with real large appendages on it, it may get into one wind at one level with another little wind balloon.

It will be called sheer where the wind level changes, where the wind direction changes. And it may take you off in a direction that you're totally unprepared for. They may not climb as quickly as you would like them to. So the skill level there, the learning curve, the ability to figure out how to drive that Cadillac as compared to that you go might mean totally different. Tell me about something I saw the other day that I thought was absolutely thrilling. I saw the beanbag dropper where it was. I saw those balloons coming in. I saw those guys bump in and grind in and push in and shove in and drop in their bags and stuff. That looked like it was bumper cars to me. But it was so exciting.

I mean, is there some way you can help us better understand what's going on with the pilots between the balloons and all that other stuff. So when people see this footage they know what's going on in the basket. Competitively in tasks. That's where the baggy drops occur. Those type of tasks with the balloons all coming to one point, seemingly. Where you're seeing balloons kiss, where envelopes are coming and touching envelopes, kind of bouncing off of each other. For a pilot standpoint, those were a lot of fun. Yeah, I pay a lot of attention to your neighbor. Of course, there's rules. Of course, you don't want to climb too fast. You don't want to come up under anybody too suddenly because that can be dangerous. But most of these guys out there really understand and they've flown competitively. That's the fun part. Am I getting nudged by somebody it might help you? It might knock you completely out of the way. Some of these guys that know that. You'll see different shapes out there flying.

You'll see some of these little skinny racer-type balloons look like a football on end. The guys are pretty serious about it. They fly competitive events all over the country or all over the world. They understand that the prizes and they understand the dangers and they understand the fun still. It can look pretty impressive from the ground like a bunch of bumper cars, but there's a lot of intent there. Everybody understands what they're doing. They have pretty good control over their aircraft. It can be really surprising. When you think of this bag of hot air floating through the air, the concept of control, you know you're at the mercy of the wind, but one thing you do have is you're out to do control. You can control almost fractionally how high or low you go. And you'll see that out there. They'll tack those winds just like a sailor trying to get the aircraft where they need it for their drops. It is exciting. It's fun to watch. It's fun to do. Why is it fun to do?

It's a challenge like any other. It's fun because you can. There's people that like to climb to the top of mountains because they're there. It's the same with balloon competitions. It's the same with race cars. You do it because you can. You know how. It's a challenge. You can challenge yourself. It's a personal challenge. And there's team sports out there, but that's not flying a balloon. Flying a balloon is pretty much an individual in their aircraft. It's like a race car driver. It referred to it as the chance of the competition like you were doing the other day. Help me a little bit. I'm going to ask the question again. Put me in the basket. What's the pilot doing as he's trying to get himself in position? What's going through the pilot going out in a pilot while it's happening? Well, during the competition, a pilot has got so many things going on all at once. You need to know where the winds are. That's the most important part because you need to know exactly when to descend or when to climb. So you're going to watch everybody else, everybody else is your guide.

Everybody else in the air at the time is your pilot ball, your pilot ball. He's got a better wind down there. I want that wind. I'll descend into it. Oh, look, that guy's going west. I want that west. I'm going to go up there. You find the wind. You work it. You say, OK, I can stay in this wind for two minutes. I can descend into that one. And I can corkscrew my way right over the target. Climbing, descending, paying attention to everybody around him. Trying to make sure and avoid bumping somebody that might knock me out of the way. And a lot going on. A lot of thought process. I'll close the area, paying attention to the other balloons. The whole. Absolutely. Everybody around you, particularly the ones that are right below you. When you get into that kind of close competitive flying. You want to get lower, but there's one below you. And can you wait him out and maybe slide down the side of him? The worst thing in the world you could ever do is have your basket contact his envelope.

That could be catastrophic. You're careful. You really are. You're really paying attention to what's going on. You're really focused on your flying. How do you figure out the angle? How do you know when to drop? How do you know when to drop? That's what we call 10% skill, 90% pilot error. There's a lot of luck involved in it. You'll see some guys that'll be close enough to just lay it over the edge of the basket. So the guys that are swinging it to see if they can get that extra 3540 feet and fling it. You just, you play with it. It's a lot like throwing a baseball. You get used to how to throw the ball and get it to where you want it to go. And if you're lucky enough to get close enough, then you throw it. What's the game yesterday? We had cards out on the field and our big X. Balloon Fiesta Holdem. It's starting to get to me. No, the games.

Balloon Fiesta Holdem is fine. I just wanted to pause before I wasn't done speaking. All the games from yesterday. Balloon Fiesta Holdem. A card game, much like any other poker holdem game. Pilots are trying to put their markers down in such a way to get the best hand. Baggy drops to an X. Exactly that, closest to the center, gets the most points. I was down there watching the measure that. That's a very precise measurement. I wouldn't want to be a score. Those poor guys having to measure within tenths of inches. Because there's so many that get so close. And when you're competitive, those little 80-body differences can make a huge difference. In money, in prizes, it's bottom line. We'll do it the other shot. I just love watching that. I had no idea.

I was up with Timmy Rutherford. Timmy Rutherford's just got a lot going on. I'm on my long lens on the camera. I can see guys in the basket. This close. It was really exciting. Is there a sense of excitement? Is this pilots giving a chance to really show off their skills? There is a huge amount of excitement when you're in the basket. The first amount of excitement is discovering. I'm really going to fly over the field. I'm actually going to get close. And as you get closer to the target, I'm going to go over the target area. And at last 75 feet figuring out I'm actually going to be able to score. I'm going to be able to get close enough to drop it on the axe. Yeah, you get a real rush out of that. There's no doubt whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you've done it for the first time. Or this is the 300th time you've been able to drop. There's a good rush that comes with that. That was perfect. Thank you. That's just one thing.

Come on, cut. We were talking about, I think she came in and we were talking about glows. We could back up to that. I appreciate it. Or actually, no, let's do a key grab. Because there's going to be a key grab tomorrow. Or is it Friday or so? Key grab. They've kind of gone away from actually putting keys on poles. But there's envelopes on the poles. They could have certificates in them. They could have cash in them, real-life, greenbacks. You never really know. And they never really tell you what's on a pole. I'm not so sure that anybody really knows. I think they put them in a big basket and stick them on a pole and hope for the best. Truly random. And yet another one of those I'm lucky enough to get over the field. I'm lucky enough to be closing in on a pole. Now, can I really grab it? Am I that close? They're exciting. They're just as exciting as the flying competitions. And you'll see a lot of pilots making a good run at it.

What are some of the prizes? This year, I think prizes are all cash. There's certificates. I'd be honest with you. I'm not really sure. Don't really concern myself with what they're giving away and just that they're flying and flying safely. Okay. I'm just trying to get a little light on it. Does that know when I do that? That's what? Okay. Have you done a keep grab or a pole? Tell me what's going on in your mind when you're, when you're doing a keep grab? When you're flying a flying task for a pole or for a key grab or something that's got a real prize on the end of it. Again, it's focused. You're really working those wins. You're really tacking your aircraft. Trying to see if there's something better that's going to get you where you want to go. And who's got the better advantage down below you as you're coming in? Who's got a better win?

Who's really making a good run at it? And can I do it better right behind them? And then you get there and you reach out and you're just about a foot and a half short. You're still real pleased you got there and you flew over it. And you hope somebody got a picture of that. And they can share it with you. And you're pleased to it yourself. Yeah, I might have waited another second or two longer. Do you ever get one? No. No. I would need it as a full statement. I never got one. I never got one. I close, but I never got one. Special shape's gloityo. We were doing that before. You're telling me about being there. When the balloons light up and stuff like that, let's do that again. Tell me about being at a gloityo and what that's like. Special shape's glow or even a balloon glow of any nature out here, or just the size and the whole feel that you get is the balloons actually

do an all burn or do a flicker burn, the feeling of the crowd. And you can feel the excitement and use and awe as they go on. But you can really feel if you're attuned to it, the wind. You can really feel that you're in the midst of something that's drawing a lot of air in there. Those burners, they show up a lot of propane in a lot of air real quick. And when they all burn at the same time, it's an amazing feeling. You can really feel it. It's fun. Do you like seeing all the different shapes lighting happen? Does anybody share with us what that's like? During the glow of the pilots actually use the burners to create more light rather than heat. The colors, the vast colors, and the array of colors, the way they glow, the way they pop out and jump at you. You can stand back. You can take a look from afar and see all of that all at once.

It's a stained glass window. It's beautiful. It's absolutely amazing to see and to realize that it's a live action. Is your standing there? Have you watched the crowded all-in-see direction? The crowd reactions are amazing. The kids are the best. We sometimes lose some parents because they start looking and the kids start looking and parents go that way and the kids go that way. I hope we've got to find them. Get them back together again, but just pure awe. You can always tell the ones that have never been there before. They stop dead in their tracks and they just stare. And as soon as it stops, as soon as it dies down, it's like, wow. What are they going to do that again? How about that final mass extension? What's the feeling like on the last day? Oh, day nine.

From our standpoint, we're ready for day nine. We've had a long week. We've had a lot of events to cover. And we know it's the end. A little bit of sadness that goes with that because we know we're going to wait another year to do it again, but it sure is going to feel good to sleep a little extra. So that gets us back to that question. I think I asked it again, but we'll do it one more time. You'll find a mass extension or whatever, what's running through your mind besides sleep or something like that? During the final mass extension, I guess the biggest thing that runs through your mind is that you've reached it and you've done it. You've done it and you've ear you there. This is the last one for this year. We certainly don't want to make any mistakes, but we're well-practiced. We've got our nine days in. This is the exemplification day. We've really done it. We've gone that far.

As long as we don't have weather issues, it's a good one. It's always a good one. That's sense of accomplishment, which is what I think you're telling me. Maybe you could define that a little more. We've gone nine days. We've had how many launches. We've got so many balloons in this last thing. I mean, if there's a way to kind of wrap that up, so we get a sense of the scope of the festival. The last day, the farewell mass extension, that kind of encompasses a whole lot of the attitude. We've already put in our eight days. We've got the ninth one to go. We've had events some days, two days. Everybody's a little tired. Some are a little cranky, but I think the spirit of ballooning is where it shows the best. Is everybody's begrudgingly ready to go home? But at the same time, this last one, we're going to make sure we do it right. We're going to make sure that we've got all the fun in.

We can possibly get in. And that everybody has a nice, safe day. So we can see them again next year. How does that feel when you walk off the field? It's all done. When the last day hits, and you finally walk off the field, all the balloons have gone, it's a nice, really feeling. We did it. We did it again. We got another nine days under our belts. It kind of seems like it's a long way till the next one. It's on a great end of the year. Excellent. Terrific. Well, your watch is showing people called Dirty Jobs. Yes, I love that show. Absolutely. I love it. If you can preface my answer with your answer,

but that would be great. What color is this guy? That's a nice blue. That's a nice blue. I guess I'm really interested in the competition. Some say there's a lot of different competitions, and the points kind of add up, but the big thing is they're going for really good prizes. That's kind of what I'm hoping to do as a setup. Okay. The total number of prizes this year are 37. We played Place 37 pilots in the overall rankings for competitive prizes this year. There are a lot of other things that are going on at the same time. The reason it's 37 is because this is the 37th year of the Albuquerque International Blue Fiesta. And the prize list always matches the year number. We have about six figures in value, dollar value of prizes. Top prize this year, I believe, is a Harley Davis and motorcycle. That's pretty cool. And then they rank down from there.

And they're usable things. It's stuff that kind of agrees to the pilots. There'll be entertainment items like plasma TVs, but there also will be gear that they would use in their flying activities. GPS units, radios, those kinds of things. DVD players, binoculars, all that kind of stuff. Quickly, tell me what kind of competitions are there? There are five days of competitive flying scheduled. And we hold a series of competitive and what we call non-competitive events that are also scored for additional separate prizes. I'll give you an example of each. The competitive events are cumulative. They're scored individually each day, but they also accumulate over the five days. The other non-competitive events that we also score are for separate prizes. For example, we have the Fiesta Holden.

And the Fiesta Holden is basically a poker-based competition. The pilots are given five-hold cards that all of them have in common. And that's listed in their pilot rules and regulation. And then what they try to do is make their best five-card poker hand out of two more cards that they have to fly over and drop their scoring markers on. And then we will score those. We'll put them into the computer. Computer already has the total possible hands that can be won in any of those combinations of the cards. And then it'll tell us who has the best hand. So that is a separate prize. It's called a non-competitive event, but it's going on at the same time as the other competitive events. In fact, Mondays and Tuesdays for Fiesta are our busiest days. We have literally 18 active targets on Fiesta Field at one time. We have the 15 cards that are associated with the Texas Holden, the Fiesta Holden. And then we have three active competitive targets all going on at the same time.

So my people are pretty busy. What are the X's? The X's are for the competitive targets. They are 25 feet nominally in size in diameter, a regular standard crossed X. And we are scoring closest to the center of that X out to 200 feet. So when we talk about the scoring area, we are talking about a circle that's a radius of 200 feet, 400 feet diameter. And anything that lands inside that circle, the responsibility of my scoring team, to measure that, record that, bring it back here, we put it into the computer. And then those scores become part of the competitive database that's tracked all week long. Those events change from day to day. There are either flying tasks, multiple judge declared goal tasks. And Fiesta Golf that contribute to the competition, and they're all measured in terms of distance.

So the flying task only designates what direction the pilots are competing in. The multiple judge declared goal are those tasks that occur when the pilots fly away from Bloom Fiesta Park. And we have targets spread out throughout Albuquerque proper. The pilots are given a map at the beginning of Fiesta. And that map indicates a variety of different things on there, not the least of which, are all of the possible active targets that we'll have during the five days of competition. Igor, in the Croatian balloon, was out today flying over target in the desert away from the field. Right, what was that? One of the 13 targets that we have available to us, and I think you're specifically referring to target number nine, which is in the Bloom Fiesta Field South. There are other target areas, and what will happen is that right after pilot briefing,

while the pilots are beginning to get their crews and their balloon vehicles together, and then go to wherever their launch site is. For today, the launch sites were all on Bloom Fiesta Field. And we had a mass ascension this morning. So, my people are out setting up the targets ahead of time. And so, prior to the launch of any of the balloons, we have the designated targets that the Bloom Master has chosen for that day. My people have already arrived at those targets. They've set up the standard Xs, and they're waiting for the balloons to come on in and drop their scoring markers. And so, that's what Igor was participating in today. And tell me about target number nine, what is that, what was the challenge there? They all pretty much look the same. The challenge is that they're in different areas of Albuquerque. So, it's not that they have to fly to all three that can fly to any target of their choice, and they're only allowed to score on one target. So, it's an opportunity for as many pilots as possible to score,

because we don't tell them they have to score only on this target or only on that target. On a day like today with a mass ascension, we gave them three targets that they had an opportunity to choose from. They were all primarily south of Bloom Fiesta Field today, because the driving winds today were from the north. So, it would be kind of silly to put a target somewhere where we didn't expect balloons to fly. We want them to score. We want them to get close to the crosshairs of the Xsota speak, and make the best score possible to move up in the rankings for the competitive prices. Alright, so, how do you measure a target? How do you determine who's closest and how close you're from? How far away you're from? Give us a sense of that. Well, we actually can have scoring devices drop dead center. I mean, a total distance, if you will, of zero feet, zero inches.

And the scores are done manually. I have a team out at every target with multiple memories of standard tape measure. And we have a procedure where there's redundancy built in to everything that we do. And so, everything's done in pairs. Two eyes on the tape measure, two people looking at the scoring marker, two people annotating the score, making sure that there's redundancy and accuracy and everything that we do. We measure from the center of the X where we have fixed the start of the tape measure. And we measure out to where the weighted portion of their scoring device is. The scoring device is basically a little sandbag. And it's a pre-measured amount of sand sewn into a nylon bag that has a streamer on it. And usually the streamers are all three to four feet. And that particular bag is dropped on the target as the pilot flies over. And the weighted portion, the portion that has the sand in it, is where we measure to the closest to the center of the X.

And like I said before, we measure out to 200 feet, so we could have scores ranging from zero feet, zero inches, to 199 feet, 11 inches, and three quarters of an inch. That's as far out as we can go. We measure in quarter inch increments. So it's pretty accurate. How close have you seen the markers talk right on top of the X? Zero zero. So make that a complete statement for me. The closest that we've seen a score is a pilot dropping dead center. Right on the cross here is at the X. And of course that score is zero feet, zero inches. And we've seen them all the way out to the 200 foot circle. That's kind of amazing. It is amazing. And like this morning, we had a very active target. We had over 100 and some, it doesn't sound like a lot.

But in a small area concentrated area where the target is, we had scoring devices on top of scoring devices. So it's a very laborious, very time-consuming process. We all kind of hover around and very slowly take off the baggies after we've measured them. And each baggie has identification information on it. The pilots are all given labels. The labels have what we call a competition number on it that's based on the banner number that they're given, that they're assigned for Fiesta. And their status is a pilot, primary pilot or secondary pilot, tertiary pilot. Those are normally stuck onto the scoring devices. And if they aren't stuck onto the scoring devices, we hope that the pilots have written their banner number on the scoring device so that we can tell who it belongs to. What we will do then is, as we determine the distance from the center of the X for each of the scoring markers, is that then and only then will we physically pick up the marker. And on that label, we will transcribe the measurement that we have determined.

And then two people will sign their initials to that, verifying that both of them were involved in determining the distance and validating that distance. And then those markers will all be brought back here to the scoring trailer. And each of the marker has a barcode associated with a specific pilot. We will scan those barcodes. Those barcodes are recognized by our computer because the computer has in it the registered database of pilots who are competing here at Fiesta. It will validate the information and we will double check it manually. Competition name, pilots name. And the feet and inches then will be manually put into the day. We do that twice on two separate computers. And then the two computers talk to each other and validate whether or not their scores are identical in both databases after we've finished. And that's just one more double check to make sure that we've got the scores accurately recorded. No monkey business for any of the pilots.

No monkey business. Normally we wouldn't be doing this inside the scoring trailer because only the scoring officials are allowed in here. But we're done for the scoring for the day. The Mondays, I'm sorry, Tuesdays results are now final. Wednesday's results are preliminary and they're all posted at the locations here on Fiesta Park for the pilots to look at. Let's back up a little bit. Sure. Let's talk about what you've seen in this time or in the past about just how accurate the pilots are and how impressed you are, how crazy you might be, or whatever. There are always surprises at Fiesta. There are expectations because we have such a vast range of pilot skills here at Fiesta. You know, we have six, 700 pilots flying six or 700 balloons. And they range from professional hot air competitors to the standard sport flyer. And it's always amazing and fun, for example, to see the sport flyers every once in a while, find themselves over the target. And scoring just as well as some of the professionals that technically do this every day for a living.

So those are some of the surprises. We have seen balloons do strange things, go in different directions over the target. We have seen folks, unfortunately, do some silly things like get fixated on the target and forget the fact that they're supposed to be flying a balloon. And sometimes this inhibits their ability to score. I heard you asked my test the ground. Could you talk about that? Sure. We have instances where pilots contact the ground in a scoring area. This happens as a result of a variety of different things, but more often than not. It's the adrenaline of being near a target, having the opportunity to score. We call that target fixation. It's a very difficult situation to overcome because it's the individual that has to overcome it. It's the pilot in command that has to overcome it, pilot in charge.

And we have to constantly remind them that we want them to safely fly and operate their balloon first and then compete in the competition after that. It ranges from just skimming the ground, light touches, maybe some not so light touches that cause some oscillation in the whole balloon and basket and all, but luckily we haven't had any serious problems with balloons touching the ground. We can rip those off. So it has hope in you to say, I'll tell you what I'd like to say. If you touch the ground, you incur a penalty. If you land, and it's not an emergency situation, that's a more serious penalty if you will, then if you just brush the ground nonchalantly, if there is such a thing. We have a range in which we can penalize pilots for what they do.

And that range includes touching the ground. If it's incidental contact, the penalties are lower. If it's deliberate or the pilot has declared an emergency, we won't penalize them. But if it's deliberate, and they land within a scoring area, and that activity has impeded access for other balloons to reach the scoring area, that's pretty serious, and we will penalize that. Up to and including a penalty that would pretty well knock them out of the overall competition. We have a range of penalties for a variety of different activities. Obviously, there are the serious activities like violating safety rules, violating AIBF rules, being dishonest.

Those are the most serious, and that pretty well disqualifies you from competition, or you will lose the competitive points that you gain for that event. And then there are the less serious ones that occur just because the event is the way it is. The scoring marker has a tail on it, and that tail needs to be completely unfurled, unrolled, so to speak. Because if it was all rolled up with a rubber band around it, you're basically throwing the rock, and that would give you a competitive advantage. Whereas the tail itself causes a variety of different things to happen in the air. So we want everybody to have an equal opportunity. We'll penalize folks for that. We'll penalize folks for not launching correctly. You know that we like, even though the mass ascensions look like everything's going on in a very haphazard way, there are really controlled activities with launch directors on the field, allowing balloons to leave in an orderly pattern. So if they don't follow the launch director's guidelines, for example, we'll penalize them for that.

Not only will they be talked to by the AIBF officials, both safety and possibly the event director, but we will also penalize them in the competitive range as well. So what are some of the amazing things you've seen in this competition? What are those stories? Do you as somebody who's involved in looking out and can share with us some of the exciting things that are happening? This is my 10th year. Last year I witnessed something I had never seen before. We had a very wonderful day of flying. I have the best seat in the house in my job, which is right out there on the field with the field all roped off and the crowd kept it bay while all the targets are in play. Last year I saw balloons flying all four different directions over the field. It was just an amazing sight to stand there and watch. Obviously they're all under control, they all know where they're going, but the unique wind situation that we have here in Albuquerque had just set up so that we had balloons going north, southeast, west, all at the same time.

I have also seen pilots who have been here for the first time not knowing what to experience, just having a ball enjoying the flying here in Albuquerque scoring very, very high because they happen to find themselves over a target just by chance. And then of course the folks that really work at it and gain those real high positive point scores because they're good pilots and they're good at what they do. I can hear the machine up on the rock. Tell me about what's it Friday we're doing to keep grabbing the pole or whatever that is. Friday is the key grab. We have five poles set up on the field. There will be five poles set up across midfield out here on Blue Fiesta Park. There are about 30 feet tall in on top of each of those poles will be an envelope.

In that envelope there'll be a variety of different certificates and prizes for that particular activity range from cash to the keys to a brand new vehicle provided by one of our AIBF sponsors. What's new is they maneuver their balloons in and there are several things going on on key grab day. The poles are just one of the activities. There will be other targets on the field that contribute to the overall competition score. More than one event going on in those days but the most popular event is the key grab. Now maneuver their balloons so that either the pilot or someone else in the basket can reach on and grab one of those envelopes still keep their feet on the ground so to speak in the basket keep their feet in the basket. They can literally take the envelope with them and fly on and they'll turn that envelope in later for the value of the prize that's on the certificate site.

It's a fun day. The key grab is a real fun time for the spectators, probably the most popular event here at Fiesta. It consists of a series of five poles that are spaced randomly on the field. The pilots are required to fly in from off field and maneuver in such a way that they can get close enough to one of those poles to grab an envelope that's taped the top of the pole. That envelope has a certificate inside. It's an interesting event from the standpoint. It's very, very competitive. It is one of those non competitively scored events because it has separate prizes associated with it. But it occurs in conjunction with other targets that are going on at the same time that do contribute to the overall score.

On that particular day, not only do the spectators have the opportunity to see all of the balloons that are registered at Fiesta fly into the field and attempt to grab one of the five envelopes that are available, but they also get to see them compete in some of the other distance target activities that are going on at the same time. The envelopes are at the top of about 30-foot poles that are spaced randomly, like I said on the field. And it's just an interesting event. Balloons coming in from all directions at all times. And every balloon that's registered at Fiesta has an opportunity to participate in that particular event and they usually do. The pilots have to maneuver in such a way so that they can get within arm's length of one of those envelopes, reach out and grab it while still staying in their basket with both feet on the bottom of the basket. And that maneuvering takes a little bit of skill, a little bit of luck, and a lot of excitement when they get close enough to physically grab that envelope and fly off with it.

And waving those certificates and going, what did I win? What did I win? Something don't even open the envelope. Until they get back here to the scoring trailer. Someone rip it open right away and see what they want. It's really exciting to see the enthusiasm and it's not just the pilot that excited, the pilot and the crew and everybody associated with that particular balloon just having a lot of fun. It's a good time to change the discs. I'm running it. On top of the pole, on top of these 30-foot poles are these envelopes. That's all I need you to do. On top of these 30-foot poles, on top of these 30-foot poles are these little standard business envelopes with the price or certificates inside. Okay, thank you. We have an envelope in here if you want me to hold it up.