It’s the last day of the holiday and I have wind (18-22mph Bft 4/5) and sun so off I dash to make the most of it. Its blowing hard so I make a start with the big camera, the kite is pulling hard so it seems reasonable to give it something heavy to pull…
I shoot a burst of shots as the kite rises and carries the camera towards my subject, the next thing that happens is the kite hits a rotor off the tree tops behind the monument and it begins its awful downward spiral, I regain control just before the kite sinks into a tree and the rig lands gently in soft grass…whew. Adding the load to the kite pulled it into the rotor! So what to do? I recover the kite, checkover the rig and it’s ok but I’m not putting it up there again in this wind. I decide to have a go with a superlight fixed tilt AutoKAP rig to see if I can get something out of the oportunity. The thinking is that less weight will be easier to manage if the kite is going to go crazy and if it hits the dirt there’s not much to cry over.
I have been keeping this is my pocket for a while now:
I have not solved the pan movement yet so I fixed the rig with rubberbands, set the intervalometer to 3s and let it go: the kite is really a handful as the wind builds in gusts to over 20mph and I’m glad to let the camera look after itself. This is the best I got before the SD card filled up:
It’s a long way short of the quality I wanted but after another escape from the rotor I thought enough was enough and headed home. I was very keen to keep the kite from overflying the busy road and consequently kept it on a shorter line than the ‘bounce’ of the wind off the trees warranted. I’m not sure I could say AutoKAP ‘saved the day’ but the light weight option meant flying a camera was possible…just!
Billboyheritagesurvey's Blog 