The National Classic.

A tradition for the Thompson Family. Indianola Iowa, A small town in the Midwest that has a huge claim to fame. It is the home of the US National Balloon Classic. An event we have had a Thompson flying in every year since 1977. An event where we can count dozens of friends we have known for almost forty years.

Coming from FLORIDA.

We start our trip every year at O'Dark Thirty on a Wednesday morning. We try to be on the road by 4am. We then spend the next 14 to 16 hours driving. We stop only for gas. Near the end of the day we try to find a family outing to get us out of the van for a few hours. In years past we have done the Ruby Falls caverns and Rock City. We have gone up in the St. Louis arch and visited the Mark Twain caverns in Hannibal MO. Something to get the imprint of the van seat out of our behinds.

The second day we start out fairly early so we can arrive in Indianola around 4 to 5 in the afternoon. The first thing we do is drive into town to the Simpson College campus. We go to the soccer field behind Picken dorm and pay our respects to a little piece of ground that started over 4 decades of Thompson Family involvement in the world of ballooning. It was that soccer field in 1973 where I saw my first balloon and lit the fire that would propel me to become a pilot before I had a drivers license and eventually drag my parents Jim and Connie into the world of ballooning. That soccer field was where I would take my first flight at the age of 15 and take my first flight as a private pilot on January 1st 1976. It was on that field that I flew my first time in competition in Indianola in 1977 and on that same field I would finish #3 in the US National Championships the very next year at the ripe old age of 18. At least for me that piece of grass has a huge bit of nostalgia.

At this point we are both excited to be in Indianola and severely road weary. So we head up the street to Jule and Kevin's. (Sisters place) We bring with us each year a commercial canopy to install in her side yard so we can have a place to gather after the flight in the morning and in the evening. Each day we get together as a family and laugh and talk and cherish the time we call simply "The Classic"

Tired and beat up we still have a trip to make. We drive the 35 minute trip to my parents house in Des Moines for a badly needed nights sleep. Now you would think that we would sleep in the next morning but we do not. We get up at 4:30 because we make the traditional first bomb run on the main balloon field. if the weather permits we go out and launch with the intent on landing on the main balloon field. We then head over to jule's place for a breakfast brunch and a get together with many other friends who stop over to welcome us to town. Now believe it or not the last two and a half days have been the leisure part, the real hectic part is going to start in just a few hours.

REGISTRATION! OK gang as they say in Jurassic park. Hold on to your butts. Registration begins at about 1 or 2pm We go in and collect all the goodies they have for us. I will admit the pilot packs at the classic are just that Classic! All kinds of goodies and bags and shirts and coupons and of course your markers and your banner. Each year we have a tradition that at the end of the Classic we get a black marker and autograph the back of the banner with the year and what place we came in. Of course each year we look forward to opening up the banner and seeing all those old signatures. Now it is off to the races. We must get into town and move out of our van that has been home now for more than three days and get moved into our campus apartment. This will require many many many trips from the van to the apartment and back. The sheer volume of stuff we bring from the girls bags and comfort items to the balloon gear from the lap tops and radios and IPads and chargers for all we look like a pack of gypsies on their first stay at a Holiday Inn.

Once we are moved in it is time to head back out to the Pilot Compound for the evening flight briefing. Yes we are going to go and fly again. Now the normal first Friday flight is the port-a-potty flight. Our goal is to go upwind and fly back to the field In front of the crowd and put a marker on the X and hit and knock over a port-a-potty on the field. Yes it is an empty one! We make our best attempt but the main objective is to hit the field so you can pack up right there and begin your first nights tailgate party. Now since my sister lives in Indianola we don't tailgate for very long at the field. About the time it gets dark and the bugs come out we pack up and head to her home. We have a canopy with tables and bug spray and candles so the bugs are not a real problem at her home. Somewhere around 10:30 we excuse ourselves because we need to get into our apartment to bath the baby and get a good nights sleep. 4am comes real fast that next morning and Saturdays schedule includes two flights and a parade thru town!

Once again and for the next 8 days our alarm clock will wake us up at 4:30 in the morning. We get up and get dressed and head into the pilot compound. No one knows what BalloonMeister Bill will have in store for us. He is a master at setting us up with very challenging tasks. Many flights we will have three or four targets to hit and all set up where you have to work to be able to get close enough to the targets to score. The talent it takes to set up a course for pilots to fly biased on the weather and wind forecasts is a huge task and to do that hours before the flight begins is nothing short of a nightmare and Bill and his team to it flawlessly over and over thru the entire 9 day event. We arrive at the pilot compound about 5:45 and the doors open at 6:00. We take our seats and get our first look at the days weather information and the all mighty Task Sheet. This is a sheet of paper that outlines your flight. Where are the targets and what type of targets are they and all the other rules you must play by. Bills team are very creative at doing this. There are many times were it takes some time to get the full impact of what he is asking us to do. But that is one of the seriously addictive parts about the classic. It is a challenge for all who participate.

The Pilot briefing begins with Roll Call. Then we get our weather briefing and then the task sheet is explained. Many questions and explanation's are give and the clock is already ticking. Many of us are just itching to get out the door. See about this time the sun is coming up and for many of us the idea of launching 30 to 40 minutes after sunrise is crazy. As the sun comes up it begins to heat the earth and that heating will make the air unstable. Imagine driving your car to Key West and there is a hurricane coming. At first you will feel a little bit of wind on the car but as you get closer to the hurricane you find it harder and harder to keep the car on the road. Eventually you will be blown off the road into the ditch. Well that is what it is like as the sun heats the earth. At first you get bobbled around a little bit but as the sun gets higher in the sky it gets more powerful and the winds get stronger and you loose control. Not fun,

Then you hear those magic words. YOU ARE DISMISSED! What happens next can only be compared to a buffalo stampede. over 200 people all trying to get out the door and out the door NOW. My Wife who is also my crew chief has already texted the crew and told them to be in the truck because as soon as my but hits the seat we are off. We have studied the weather and launched our own pi-balls so we already have a good idea of the area we want to be in for launching. I use an IPad and a GPS to figure out where I want to be. I have window mounts for both in the truck and identical mounts for both in the balloon. I set the GPS for the first target to so I can watch the distance and direction to the target. I know what the forecast said and what our test balloon did so I know about how far and what direction from the target I want to be. When the GPS tells me I am in that area it is time to start looking for a big yard or field. I use a map program on the IPad that shows me the actual competition map and use that to navigate the roads and while I fly to stay out of the no fly areas. I also have a flight log program on the IPad that records all the data about my flight.

I have often wondered if there was an early warning system for the poor land owners who just happened to be upwind of the targets. The wind is from the north east so you poor homeowners who live three to four miles north east of the balloon field look out. at about 6:30 this morning you will have a knock on your door only to look out and see 18 balloon teams in your driveway all wanting to use a piece of your back yard!

So now my crew swings into action. Like a finely tuned Olympic team each has a job to do and each is ready to perform. Within minutes we have an aircraft ready for launch. I do mean minutes, usually under about five we are ready to lift off and off we go!. The sight when you first lift off is spectacular. 80 to 100 balloons are all launching from every little patch of grass they can find in one little area. As they say, HERE WE GO~

Flying to a target is a mix between reading your GPS and scanning the horizon to try to find the target. Many times the scoring team likes to place the targets in rather hidden locations. Personally I do not like this at all. I do not want to compete with the scoring team. Placing the target in locations that are hard to see or behind a tree line just does not feel right to me. When you can not see the target and have to rely solely on the GPS the target needs to be where the GPS says it is and many times it is not. Its like playing darts. I am going to tell you what wall the dart board is on but wont let you actually see the dart board till after you have thrown the dart. Give me a target I can see from the direction I will be flying in and let me use the skill of flying the balloon and not relying on the accuracy of your GPS coordinate. OK Enough ranting about that. Well .. One more. Make everything Gravity Drop.

So the first target is a road target. This means it is placed on a road and your marker must land on the road to get a score. To make matters worse we are approaching the road from the north and the north side of the road is a CORN FIELD, Yepper 6 foot tall corn so you can not see even the road unless your 2 thousand feet up. So you fly by the GPS at what you think is the spot in the road where the target is. By the time you can see the target you realize it is about 500 feet west of where you were aiming for. Now you need to climb up up up to get a wind to take you further to the west but on the way up you remember its a road target! The odds of you hitting the road from 900 feet are like getting hit by lightning. So now you vent vent vent and go down as fast as you can to get low enough you will be sure to hit the road with your marker. Now THROW! and throw it as hard as you can to get as close to the target as you can. ON THE ROAD! Whew! On to the next target.

As you climb away from the first target you can not help but look back at the balloons behind you and watch as a few of them nail the target with their markers. Now it is back to work. There is another target out there and you need to nail it to recover from your first poor showing. This next target is on the main field. We know what the main field looks like since we have been flying in and out of that target for years. Today we will have two targets to hit on the main field. One of the targets is a simple X placed out in the middle of the field. Simple hit that with a red marker. The second is a little more complex. The field has a scoring area marked out on it. The best way to describe the area is imagine looking down on a square frying pan. There is a large scoring area that looks like a gigantic square and a handle coming out from the pan. The other score on the field today will be dropping two white markers inside this scoring area as far apart from each other as you can. So you have to figure out what is the greatest angle you can pass over the scoring area and drop two markers as far apart as you can while still getting as close to the red X in the middle of the field to drop a marker on that as well. Sound like fun? Yeee Haaa...

Keep in mind as you are trying to comprehend all of the stuff going on you still have to fly a balloon and a balloon in a sky with 100 other balloons. You not only have to keep this thing flying and on track to get to the targets but you must keep in mind where all the other pilots are around you and keep from hitting them as well. Some times there is some serious bumping and grinding going on at the targets Last year I was wedged between Maury Pethren on one side and Benji Clemons on the other. We were all trying to get to the same target at the same time and were all three touching each other when we crossed the target. I was center over the target by the way. This year Todd Isley and I had a good bump. We both began a decent into the target and realized that the left turn below us was way to strong and we needed to get back up and out of it. He was flying a racing balloon and I was not. He was able to get back up into the right turn sooner than I could so he began to turn toward me. Now my big ole balloon takes a while to get it moving but when it does I can make it move real good. I hollered up at Todd and said I am going to give you a good bump. When we do can you push me as far to the right as you can please.

I had fairly good drops on the main field but there were two more targets to hit. One was in the back yard of a residential home and the other was another ROAD target. YEEE HAAAA... So now we have completed the targets and need some place to get down. As always my ground team is right on the ball and are waiting up ahead in a nice yard with the landowner waiving come on down. We land nicely in a small front yard and pack the balloon away. We spend a few moments talking to the landowner and thanking him a bazillion times. Number one rule take care of the homeowners.

Totally Exhausted we head back to the balloon field to get our balloons refueled. The tailgate party at the field only last until our three balloons (Jim Thompson, Jeff Thompson & Kim McCourt) have returned and been fueled. We now head to the Thompson Compound (My Sisters place) for the after flight party. My sister spends months preparing a menu for the entire event.9 days of meals for as many people as want to join us. Honestly if you showed up un announced and had 10 people in your group, NO ONE would go hungry. She plans meals for every morning flight and for every evening flight the entire 9 days. Kevin without fail will have his pickup truck in the yard backed up to the canopy with two HUGE coolers in the back with every type of beverage you could ever want. The balloon rigs get parked in the front yard and crews park their cars on the street. It is really quite the site to see. My wife has a play list on her phone that she plays on a wireless speaker system so the whole compound has a steady supply of music for atmosphere as the pilots relive the mornings flight for the delight of the crew and the other pilots. It is at this moment I wish I could stop time. This is one of those moments in your life that, if you could you would live the rest of your life right here right now.

O MY GOD THE PARADE! Just when you think things are peaceful you realize we have a parade to be in! We jump in the rigs and head to Wal-Mart to purchase about 50 pounds of candy for the parade and head down to the college campus to get in line for the parade. We have been preparing for the parade for weeks. Each year we make Potato Cannons for the parade. Many of you know what a potato cannon is but for those that do not it is a CANNON made from PVC pipe. This thing is capable of shooting a golf ball over 300 yards.

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This is one of those things that every man who stands next to one when it is fired cant help but giggle a little. The sheer thunder when it goes off makes you want one right then. We use the potato cannons in the parade to shoot candy to the kids. We have learned that you don't shoot gumballs or any other type of hard candy. We have found out that it does a great job with small paper wraped stuff and of course popcorn is a great one too. We have also created a talcum powder bomb that we can fire from the cannon that is spectacular! I normally have my older daughter in the basket with me and she helps toss candy to the kids. My younger daughter (age 2) sits up front in the van and helps Mom toss candy out the window. My niece Hailey drives the van for us. We also have our burners up and turned on so we can fire them from time to time. Normally after we have fired the cannon and the kids rush the street to pick up the candy that has pretty much scattered from curb to cub is when we fire off the burners sending the kids screaming back to mom and dad. What great fun.

PILOT BRIEF Of course after the parade we have only a few hours to go back to the apartment and get settled in a little more since we have only been in there for a brief 5 hour nap last night and just about nothing else. So before we know it the time to head back out to the Pilot Compound at the balloon fields is upon us.