The wind at home in the morning was brisk, and the tops of the trees were swaying, so it looked like being a strong wind day. But when I got to the park, which is only about 3 miles from home, there was hardly any wind. So we spent the afternoon playing with assorted kites. Idecided to ty a 4 metre delta and even put the camera rig on the line, but whilst it would occasionally lift off the ground, it wasn't getting high enough or stable enough to be worthwhile. It did show up one problem though. I wasn't getting a lot of response to attempts to pan the camera. A short inspection showed that the locknut on the gears for the pan servo was slightly loose, enough that it couldn't turn the rig. An easy fix!
Well I got bored with a soaring and floaty delta, so decided to try a 2m rok, at least it would pull a bit! After about half an hour, there was sufficint lift that I didn't have to constantly work at the kite to keep it airborne. So decided to attach the rig and go for broke. Initially things were a bit slow, but eventually, we were airborne. So I wandered over towards the cafe to try to get some photos there. Starting at low level, I slowly allowed the kite to climb, probably not entirely legal, but at least we got sufficient height to get some nice pics. The low sun and clear skies meant things were getting picked out by the sunlight nicely.
After finishing up by the cafe, I traversed along the children's playground, stoppping for a chat with an interested bystander, and ended up in amongst the trees with the camera over the corner of the play area.
Working my way back out, I wandered around the skate park into the trees there and got a couple of shots here before the wind dropped.
With the dind droped to nothing, the rig was decending into the skate park, so some quick work recovered it to land at my feet, then some more quick pulling to keep the kite airborne and out of the trees. Eventually I managed to get the kite ito land beside a small tree. And that was that, no wind, no lift but a worthwhile day and some good pictures. Next time out in Mote PArk, I want to move around the lake and get up to the old house to see if I can get some decent pictures of that.
