HOUSTON...WE HAVE A PROBLEM...

Great day for KAP launch 2. Went to the park with my trusty assistant Macey this morning for our second launch. Winds were steady and the launch went quite well. We sent the camera up to about 250 feet and produced these pointing to the northeast:



So we decided to bring the kite back down and turn it to face to the west, back towards our house. The winds were steady so pulling back in 250 feet of line wasn't too difficult. Once the camera was close Macey grabbed it and turned the chassis to point to the west. We reset the exposure button to start taking pictures every 10 seconds and got these:



We decided to start pulling it back down when all of a sudden the line broke....up by the kite! The camera rig came crashing down to the ground and the kite floated off to the Northeast.

The camera chassis was bent but the camera was not damaged and our photos were in tact! We gave chase to go find the kite, but we had no luck in finding it. :-(

So two missions in, we have about 20 good pictures and now no kite. The saga will continue...

Time to get another kite! :-)

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1000 ft of string and gloves

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7ft delta coyne kite

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The other hanging device which I haven't used yet since the strings keep getting tangled. Arggg

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Other end of the hanging bracket. Fixed up with duck tape because it almost cut my string in two. That would be bad! Kite flys away and camera hits the ground.

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Kap rig pics

FIRST KAP Mission a Success!

We sent the camera up to about 200 feet. Macey seen here holding the kite up was my assistant for the 20 minutes. Yes she has gloves on so when the line goes out it won't burn your hand or take a finger off. How do I know to wear gloves? I nearly lost my pinky on the original first mission of the kite. It went out too fast and nearly took my finger. I had a severe string burn for quite a while. We set the camera to take a picture every 10 seconds. Ended up with about 50 pictures of which 2 or 3 are ok. HAHA..still work to be done.

My rig needs some adjustments. The hanger section nearly cut through my kite line. The winds were about 15 mph and not really solid, so the rig would bounce a little bit, hence the low keeper ratio.




The pictures are looking back to the east. In fact my house is in that group of houses on the right of the road.

I was going to try to send the kite up in my yard, but there were just too many obstacles and the wind wasn't a constant gust. So we ended up going over to the park.

Like I said, that was about 20 minutes, and only one trip up. I have some adjustments to make before the second attempt.

I'll try to put pictures of my rig up tomorrow. Stay tuned!