Comox Valley ARC Pico-Balloon Disqualified for Cheating

Not since Lance Armstrong was disqualified from the Tour de France has there been a doping scandal the scale of this week’s news that the Comox Valley Amateur Radio Clubs' pico-balloon VE7YQQ-1 was helped by the use of a banned substance.

There has been a long rivalry between the North Fraser and Comox Valley Amateur Radio Clubs, each trying to be the first in British Columbia to circumnavigate the Earth with a hydrogen filled “pico-balloon.” The rivalry intensified greatly with the recent defection of David Barkes, VE7KZ, from North Fraser when he fled the region in the cover of darkness only to emerge as leader of Comox’s ballooning team. The situation became ugly as legal teams launched suits and countersuits over his alleged theft of intellectual property relating to methods of pre-flight balloon stretching.

But this pales in comparison to the latest accusation from North Fraser that urine samples, taken at Comox’s recent balloon launch, were tampered with to avoid detection of banned performance-enhancing substances. The case pivots on the fact that Barkes “snuck behind a tree” to give his sample, providing an opportunity to switch his sample bottle with “clean urine” purchased off the internet. It was when lab tests showed that Barkes was pregnant that North Fraser smelled something wasn’t right with the urine. The International Ballooning Commission was quick to act and disqualified the balloon from competition.

“This kind of behaviour dishonours the sport and sends a terrible message to the kids out there,” said Adrian Stimpson, VE7NZ, head of event planning at North Fraser. “In addition to disqualification, we have asked the IBC to ban them for a year unless unless they write a sincere letter of apology and offer to buy the beer at the next ballooning conference.”

-reporting from IBU Headquarters, Vancouver, Canada, Adrian VE7NZ
​
The DIPOLE - the World's finest Amateur Radio News Source, like a Dipole there are two sides to every story, we ignore those sides, digging deeper for unwanted lobes and parasitic reactions.

---