California...

Tomorrow after my arrival I'm driving to the North side of the Golden Gate Bridge and hiking down to a place called Kirby Cove campground. Its below the bridge on the west side. From there I'm going to hike the trail to the top of the mountain right there. Circled below:



Then I am crossing back across the bridge and heading to Marshall Beach. There are some hiking trails in that area that lead down to the water.


That should just about do it for Sunday. Then I will make the hour drive back to the Hotel in Santa Clara.

Monday after work Matt, my trusty local companion, will either join me on a trip to Drawbridge or Mt Diablo.

Drawbridge is an abandoned town from back in the early 1900's. All the rich people used to go here for vacation. At one time there was a population of almost 100 people here. Now its a ghost town.

The only problem is, there are no roads to Drawbridge. You have to walk down train tracks to get to it. Its on an island in the middle of the south bay.




Tuesday night will then be the opposite, Mt Diablo if we didn't do that one first.


Then Wednesday, I head home early in the morning and arrive in Chicago just after noon.

I'll post pictures as we travel. Stay tuned.

Two trips down....One to go...

So Last week was North Carolina, this week was Atlanta, and sunday starts my trip to California...trying to get all my travel in before Dawn returns to work.

New kite is on the way! So when I return we should be back in business ready for the third flight. I was going to try to take it with me to California. If it comes in time, I still might try to bring it. Stay tuned!

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Kite before the crash

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Camera on chassis before the crash

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Photos before the accident

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Kite in action before the crash

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! :-)