I visited the Dutch Championships hot air ballooning, last week in Wezuperbrug (between Assen and Emmen). In the period from 21 till 24 May 2009 the 10 competitors made 6 flights. During these flights there where 20 tasks in which they could score a maximum of 1.000 points in each task.
Most interesting balloon was this brandnew Czech Kubicek Extreme Racer flown by B.Stuiver:
Here you can see him dropping his marker close to the target:
Another Dutchman with a foreign registered balloon was J.L. Becker flying G-CFNB
He made some strange moves to get closer to his goal during a fly-in
One of the Dutch racing-balloons is this UltraMagic M-65-C
Henk Broeders became the new Dutch champion, here you can see him flying during the first morning flight of this event
Not a competitor, but the competition director was also flying on Saturday evening
Don Cameron, founder of Cameron Balloons UK, was flying as a passenger in this german Schroeder Fire Balloon! After this flight I asked him how it was to fly in a Schroeder Balloon. He just smiled and said: Well, I survived...
More photo's you can find here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hetebrij/s ... 746996829/
Johan Hetebrij
http://www.airfoto.tk