Balloon Competition in Estonia, Monday August 18 2003
[WEATHER MAPS] [TUESDAY] [WEDNESDAY] [FLIGHT 1] [FLIGHT 2] [FLIGHT 3] [TO KEILA] [FLIGHT 4] [FLIGHT 5] [FLIGHT 6] [DOCUMENTS] [STAFF][SPONSORS][FIRST PAGE]

 

Monday August 18

Valdur Vacht waited for me in Tallinn harbor, or so I thought. Actually I had to wait several minutes for him to finish what he was doing: speaking to live radio audience by mobile phone. About what? The Keila-Viljandi balloon competition that was to begin on Thursday morning. The lanky and longhaired Keila Municipality media officer is by far the best balloon competition public relations man I have ever seen or even can imagine. For two weeks he has also been the hands-on organizer of the event.

On the way to Keila Valdur stops the car next to a small cemetery along the highway. At the same place, in the very same car, a strange and tragic chain of events had began two weeks ago. It had ended in death of our friend Alo Sirp, the man in charge of all competition preparations. Fate had taken the wrong turn every time it could, as if wanting to underline the conclusion that Alo’s time was inevitably up -- at age of 32. Strong sense of life’s transitory nature remained with us throughout the competition. And sorrow.

Sergei Usanov had close brush with death in June when his motorized paraglider plunged to ground from 20 meters. Sturdy propeller frame hit the ground first and saved his life. Sergei walks now with a pronounced limp.

SERGEI AND VIKTOR USANOV, THE ONLY ESTONIAN COMPETITION BALLOONISTS. GOOD AND RELIABLE MEN.
I know him and his son Viktor, so far the only Estonian competition balloonists, from previous events in Latvia and Estonia. Competent pilots, good men. We pick up two GPS sets from their garage, where a balloon envelope is under repair.
USANOV'S GARAGE IS A VERITABLE AVIATION WORKSHOP. IN ONE CORNER A BALLOON ENVELOPE IS BEING REPAIRED. THE REST OF THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH PARAGLIDER ENGINE UNITS.

We spend rest of the day checking possible goal sites and launch fields and asking permissions to use them. I notice that practically all crop is still standing. It means that we can use only few of the otherwise interesting places. Balloons need open fields for launching and landing. In competition the pilots drop 70 gram bags which have a two meter nylon ribbon as a tail, to road intersections, or to nearby fields if their aim fails a little. Dropping the bags -- called markers -- in standing crop is out of question because the results must be measured. Walking in standing wheat, rye, barley or oats will not do. Later the same week it turns out that I had guessed the winds wrong: we did not use any of the sites. Business as usual. 
PALDISKI. In the evening Valdur took me to Paldiski, the most prominent reminder of Soviet rule in Estonia. It used to be a closed and secret town, encircled by barbed wire. Once up to 16000 soldiers of Soviet Naval and Missile Forces, now about 4000 inhabitants, mostly Russian, either young or retired. Huge concrete buildings stare with hollow window openings. Much has been cleaned away, much remains in state of abandonment.

Lennart Meri, President of the Republic, summarized Paldiski's recent history in a speech eight years ago: "The year 1939 put an end to the relaxed life of the small and quiet town of Paldiski. For half a century Paldiski was turned into a submarine base and a leading training centre of the Soviet nuclear submarine forces. The military tentacles of Paldiski reached out from the Baltic to all the seas of the world: the Arctic, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean. A town where before the Second World War camomile had bloomed in the quiet streets accumulated such quantities of power of the Empire of Evil as would have been enough to annihilate several worlds and several humankinds. Now this is also a fact of the remote past." 

MY ESTONIAN-AMERICAN FRIENDS USED TO SAY IN '60s THAT NO IMPERIUM HAS LASTED FOR MORE THAN 500 YEARS. I DID NOT SHARE THEIR FAITH AND OPTIMISM AND I SUPPOSE THE COLLAPSE CAME AS A SURPRISE TO THEM AS WELL.
FORMER TRAINING CENTER OF SOVIET SUBMARINE FLEET STARES WITH HOLLOW EYES. THE TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS HAVE BEEN DISMANTLED AND THE REMAINS BURIED IN CONCRETE. [94 kb]

In the end of Pakri peninsula limestone cliffs fall 25 meters to sea. Couple of kilometers away are two islands, Suur-Pakri and Väike-Pakri. In Soviet time their inhabitants were hauled away and the islands were used by Warsaw Pact bomber pilots as target grounds. 
25 METER LIMESTONE CLIFFS IN PAKRI PENINSULA. THE ISLANDS IN THE HORIZON WERE USED AS BOMBING GROUNDS BY WARSAW PACT PILOTS. [174 kb]

Close to Paldiski, and actually on our competition map, is Ämari military airfield, the one with the longest runway in Estonia. I wonder if the long-range planes that in World War II bombed Vaasa, a Finnish town 450 km to north where I was born, had their base in Ämari. 
RUSSIAN CEMETERY IN PALDISKI.

I ask Valdur to stop at the Russian cemetery. Wildly growing vegetation, fantastic grave monuments made of metal and found objects, melancholy photographs of the deceased, benches to be used when sharing food and vodka with friends and relatives on the other side, and general state of half-abandonment create an atmosphere that belongs just here. It speaks to everyone who has some sensitivity left. [TUESDAY]