FME friends,
We’re getting close to the end of the 12 Days contest, and here is the latest news…
Updates
I made a few small updates to the system yesterday.
- The Closest Shave results were fixed to be correct and now show the top 10 users.
- I added a new layer to the map: Other Balloons (12 Hours) which shows just the last 12 hours of data. It’s great for decluttering the map. It’s also got a thicker line width, so you can add it to the Other Balloons layer and see both at once.
- I added the oxygen remaining number to the Leaderboard, so you can see how much oxygen the leaders still have.
Weather
The leading balloons are all heading over North America right now. If they can make it just halfway across, there appears to be a great weather system that may bring them over the Atlantic and back to Europe.

That’s the winds at 4,200m, so no need for oxygen. The 10,000m winds look even better - with the slight chance of a new speed record - provided you have oxygen to get you to that level. Check out the early video recaps for details on how to get the most out of your oxygen units.
Leaders
I woke up this morning to find a new name atop the leaderboard. The top 4 are now Cloudchaser (283pts), Dirkdeballonvaarder (280), Bombastic Ballooneers (279), and CommunityCats (276). With only 7 points between them, a single airport could mean the difference between success and failure!
I don’t say that Dirkdeballonvaarder is completely out of it, but their balloon is out of oxygen, heading west through Russia, and likely to be swept up to the polar regions very shortly. Sadly, I don’t see them scoring many more points.
Oxygen Status: 7 out of the top 10 balloons have kept at least 1 unit of oxygen. Maybe they’re waiting for just the right wind to make a final push to success?!
Ones to Watch: In good positions are GeaMetrics (256pts) who are 9th in the table but the best placed to pick up the good winds, hopefully while avoiding a host of airports in their path:

Also keep an eye on Julian and Allison's Adventures, both in a good position and with some oxygen.
Most Countries: In the lead is Dirkdeballonvaarder, with 24. But there are 4 teams just 1 country behind, including Axland, whose 23 counties are all in Europe and the Middle East. If they are still in that area, they could easily move up in the next few days.
Most Airports: Morphum GIS wizards are back in their rightful place at the top of the list. After crossing the Pacific and making their landfall in the USA, their first step was to visit Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose airports! They might skip around Phoenix, but Spaceport America looks too big an area for them not to score.
Fastest and Furthest: Not a lot to report here. AlaskaMapScience is still the fastest, Dean is still the furthest travelled. The speed record is unlikely to be beaten, unless anyone can make it to the fast winds off the east coast of Canada.
Closest to Safe: This category got really exciting yesterday, as COB Geomatics came within 20km of the Safe offices.

There are many other balloons approaching this coastline, but still, that’s going to be hard to beat!
Closest Airport Shave: Not that it’s a prize category, but A Mighty Wind leads this category, having come within 10m of the exclusion zone for Cannes-Mandelieu Airport (LFMD) in France. I think before we said they were 0.2m away, but the new results look a lot more reliable compared to the map.
Balloon Focus
Andrée-expeditionen still holds the most-southerly record, at 1.95 degrees north! They have been slowly (oh, so slowly) drifting west and south over the last two days. From the current map, Sky Sailor (2.65N), Sean (3.51N) and FME Evangelist II (3.94N) are the only other balloons likely to get close to the southern hemisphere in the time remaining. But the winds over Africa are so annoyingly slow at the moment.
Is Bartolomeu de Gusmão still heading westerly over the Atlantic? Yes, it is! They got caught up in a weather system that dragged them slightly north, but the same system sped them up and looks like it will drop them into the Caribbean around San Juan, probably in about 2 days’ time.

Others:
Bola Azul looks like it will add the Philippines to our list of overflown countries.
High Spirits is flying at 4,760m above terrain that is 3,600m in elevation. Well, that’s OK. What is less OK is that they are just 80km from Mount Everest to the east, and heading in that direction.

If we want to know what happens when a balloon flies into terrain, we just might be about to find out!
Contest Statistics
Finally, here are some contest statistics that you might not be aware of:
- We now have 325 balloons taking part in the contest. Of those, only 36 registered a balloon and left it to itself. Every other team has either launched manually and/or issued manual commands.
- We have overflown 123 countries. The largest countries entirely in the northern hemisphere that we have missed are currently:
- Greenland (though we came very close)
- Mexico (I think cipriancu will collect that for us today)
- Venezuela (which I think is fairly unlikely to happen).
- We have overflown 32 African countries and have 25 more to go. The most recent countries have all been African:
- Cabo Verde (1Spatial Oz)
- Uganda (Andrée-expeditionen)
- Democratic Republic of the Congo (Sean)
- Cameroon (FME Evangelist II)
- In terms of points per hour in the air, the best balloons are:
- KL (57 points, 26.3 hours = 2.165 pts/hour)
- That_guy (86 points, 43.1 hours = 1.996 pts/hour)
- Sunny (102 points, 56.6 hours = 1.804 pts/hour)
- ...and the worst performers are:
- GeneGIS GI (-5 points, 171 hours = -0.029 pts/hour)
- Green Lasers (-6 points, 233.5 hours = -0.026 pts/hour)
- One Adam (1 point, 171.1 hours = 0.006 pts/hour)
Have a great weekend and fair winds to you all!
Mark