The FAI Ballooning Commission held it’s 2012 plenary on 23&24th of March in Birstonas, Lithuania.
All sanctioned and granted Europeans and Worlds (except Worlds 2012) intend to use the competition logger. It was accepted that the logger project is now officially out of development and test phase.
Additionally, it was strongly recommended that competition loggers should be used in all CIA Category 1 events in the future. A great confirmation and success for the project.

The following upcoming events have already confirmed to use the balloon competition loggers:

• 2012, May – 1st FAI Junior World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Marijampole (LIT)
• 2012, May  - 4th Stuttgart Linde Open – 24 hours gas balloon race, Stuttgart (GER)
• 2012, July – World Balloon Trophy, Echternach (LUX)
• 2012, September – 2nd FAI Women’s European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Frankenthal (GER)
• 2012, August – 12th Debrecen Cup Int. Hot Air Balloon Competition (HUN)
• 2013 – 18th FAI European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Wroclawek (POL)
• 2014 – 1st FAI Women’s World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Leszno (POL)
• 2014 – 21st FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championship, São Carlos (BRA)

If you need more information, don’t hesitate to contact us here.

For the first time the loggers have been used in a continental championship. At the Europeans in Lleida 77 competitors flew 7 flights and 24 tasks. A total more than 500 tracks (>1000h) have been recorded. The loggers worked flawlessly. The off/on-problem is resolved. During the whole event no pilots GPS had to be downloaded and no data was lost! A big success and important milestone for the logger project.

With the latest firmware upgrade of the logger a new question was introduced, that could show up at startup after entering QNH (See image).
Pilots, don’t get confused: The question is simple: Is it a new flight or not? If you start the logger before launch or at briefing and this question rises, the answer is yes. If you want to start the logger after the flight (e.g. at debriefing) to read your declarations, the answer is no.
When a new flight is started, the logger allows you to drop all markers again and also goal declarations disappear from the user interface. Be aware that in any way you cannot clear data from your tracks. The declarations/drops done so far will remain in the track, thus scoring will not be affected.

This functionality was introduced in order to allow to reset the logger in case something went wrong with clearing the so called declaration cache. Of course pilots are not allowed to use this functionality to redrop a marker that has already been dropped in flight. Doing this might be considered interfering with the logger.

As you will know, the loggers will be used at the Europeans starting in less than one week. In order to allow inexperienced pilots train with the loggers, they can be borrowed for the training flights 14PM/15AM and 15PM/16AM. Find details the Europeans 2011 homepage.

Since Mid July we have 90 loggers in the pool! This is enough devices to run the Europeans this year in Lleida. But already before the loggers are required for many competitions in Europe including German Nationals, British Nationals and the Spanish Nationals.