The Good Wind Tracker

🎯 Yet another 69th Coupe Aeronautique Gordon Bennett 2026 race is over!

And what a race! Lucky they were to be given a window to fly through the door of Suwalki from Poland to Lithuania: a dream for many gas balloon pilots, shared with their beloved routers...

Thanks to Herve Moine and Justine Legigan and my FRA3 co-workers Bastien Lefrançois and Louis Havret. Thanks Elvina, our ATC and Michael Bleret and Francois Marchal for the weather forecast!

It was also another successful flight with The Good Wind Tracker on board! Following with a 10 second delay FRA3, flying over wind turbines, close to the buffer zone and a few kilometers from Lithuania! That was exciting and useful! ❤️

🎯 Fourth flight: Elbow

And the winner is: Emma Trn with The Good Wind Tracker 😤

The winds were pretty easy that day. 20% of competitors achieved more than 179 degrees and the first time of the week we were not talking about Celsius... 🥵

Give me an elbow and I want to win it! Like a lion facing a piece of meat.

The key was precision and timing.

In 2020, we only achieved the second place: TGW was lacking meter precision in the early days of TGW... Lesson learned: I added meter precision in man over board target!

And the reward finally came: at least 1 pts more in our total for the full competition! 🤣

Well... And a lot of fantasy game points!

Out of curiosity, I asked Claude our score and it gave 179.92 instead of official 179.8. Probably rounded values on watchmefly? Who cares? Could be a small bug on ?

📍 ELBOW TASK — MARKER 3-4-5 ANGLE CALCULATION
Coordinates (UTM Zone 31T):
Marker 3: 283277, 4927031
Marker 4: 283329, 4928392
Marker 5: 283320, 4928165
STEP 1 — Vectors
Leg 3→4: Δx = 52, Δy = 1361
Leg 4→5: Δx = −9, Δy = −227
STEP 2 — Dot & Cross Products
Dot = (52 × −9) + (1361 × −227) = −309,415
Cross = (52 × −227) − (1361 × −9) = 445
STEP 3 — Angle Between Legs
θ = atan2(445, −309415)
θ = 179.9176°
STEP 4 — Bearings
3→4 bearing: 2.1882°
4→5 bearing: 182.2706°
Difference: 180.0824°
✅ RESULT
Angle between drop 3-4 and drop 4-5 = 179.9176°

🎯 First day in french championship

Let's go for a donut! I'm sharing Emma Trn 's donut! A nice one, around 6km with the top 5!

We were told to made one entry and one mandatory exit: we went north before going high to turn right and secure the exit: unfortunately, the higher layer had shifted since the beginning of flight and we failed to achieve an extra small km and may be some bonus within the inversion? 💥

Well.... I failed to enter the correct coordinates anyway 😂
Sorry Emma! You did great anyway! 🏎️🎈

🎯 be prepared!

Goto menu "Map élévation cache" and download all gour elevation in cache.

This is a pretty high priority if you lose internet 🛜
Elevation is used to be aware of target exact elevation: this is helpful if you simulate a decent, otherwise, the software does not know where to stop!

To have elevation, you obviously must have the expected group coordinate before. You can edit them on the web site only (and restart the app)

If you have modified your coordinate, make sure after your restart of the app to also delete the automatic file competition_grid.json, otherwise, it will draw the grid at the old coordinates location!

Oups! Nouvelle version *4.1.15-vc294*...

J'ai corrigé un rare souci qui semble être passé sous les radars! Je vous conseille de vous entraîner avec les prochains jours pour s'assurer que tout va bien pour vous!

J'en profite pour vous donner l'URL de la carte que j'ai réalisée au format .mbtiles: https://thegoodwind.com/maps/cdf2026

Vous êtes prêts? 🎯

Si vous avez des problèmes, n'hésitez pas à m'en parler: le plus tôt sera le mieux!

Nouvelle version pour les championnats de France à Marmande! *4.1.14-vc293*.

J'ai publié une version (de dépit et un peu t**d dans la nuit 😂) à la suite de l'annulation de Mainfonds capable d'afficher les feux en Europe et cette version ne permettait plus de créer des comptes depuis jeudi je crois! Désolé pour les nouveaux!

Je ne pense pas devoir publier de nouvelles versions cette semaine, et je vous encourage fortement à utiliser cette dernière version!

En cas de souci, n'hésitez pas à m'écrire ou à m'appeler !

Bons entraînements ! 🎯

I was so happy to meet you all in Mainfonds at the Coupe d'Europe de Montgolfières! I had a chance to hug many people over there and I guess a public *thank you* to organizers and volunteers will not be enough compared to the huge disappointment they had... That's all we can do!

Also a big disappointment for Afra Ahmed and the Saudi teams coming from so far away to enjoy a competition and learn!

Anyway, we had a chance to fly and train and I want to thank Federico Miceli and Aerocom! Things are so simple when you have such a good friend! ❤️

This morning we were lucky enough to fly over Chenonceaux! We made 3 targets and were looking around: I wish you were all there? 🤷‍♂️❤️

Preparing maps, contest areas and usual common launch points!

Impatient I am....... 🎯

Coupe d'Europe de Montgolfières

Prêt pour la Coupe d'Europe de Montgolfières 2026 à Mainfonds?

Télécharger les cartes pour The Good Wind Tracker ici au format mbtiles!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Get ready for Mainfonds! Download your mbtiles on your device and import them into TGW!

https://thegoodwind.com/maps/mainfonds/

NOTE: I'll be there if you have questions 🤟