Fun in the sun at Hardelot

Well I didn't get to KAP, but it was great fun anyway.

Saturday 26th September saw KKF on their annual outing to celebrate Christmas, this year it was 2005. Its a long story, so you'll need to ask me for an explanation. Anyway as Hardelot festival had been put back from its normal May slot to late September, we decided to combine the two and have som efun on the beach.

Most of us took a leisurely journey, whilst the advanced party of 1 took the train and was asking where we were, whilst we were just leaving Dover! Gloriously smoooth crossingand arrived in Calais in good sunshine for the steady drive down to Hardelot. We managed to find somewhere to park on the beach, and spotted the advance party flying already.



She had already set up the Christmas theme, much to the surprise of those around us. So we got our act together and were soon playing in the sun and the sand. There were lots of interesting kites to see and with the tide out, plenty of space (please note Margate organisers!) We had a couple of hours flying and making friends. There were a lot of Kapers there, so I decided not to bother getting anything out of the car. Anyway, I was enjoying myself too much.

About 3pm UK time, we decided to go to find something to eat, but unfortuinately most of the restaurants were closed! However there was one that was willing to serve us, so we settled down on the terrace for our Christmas dinner.



We seemed to get a few strange looks from the locals as crackers were pulled and we generally caused disruption! Fed and watered it was time to head back to the beach. Where had everyone gone? Well the tide was coming in and most of the display kites had come down and the beach was almost deserted. Being muilt of stronger stuff at KKF, we decided to have a rok fight, and spent another hour in the sun before deciding that it was time to head off to catch the ferry home.



A quick drive up to Calais and straight onto the ferry, to settled down to crisps and Christmas cake for supper. Great day out and thanks to eveeryone who came along and made it such fun.

Margate - better late than never

A bit late, but finally I've got some time to post a quick item on Margate festival. Wasn't it fun? Saturday was sunny and warm with a very gentle breeze. Everyone seemed to be moaning about the lack of wind. What was the problem? I managed to get a premier rok up to about 800 feet and later in the day, got my maxi dopero flying serenely above the crowds, stable like it was nailed to the sky!

Sunday was much cooler, much windier and much duller. In the morning, it was a case of flying a ribbon box, which again I let climb to about 800 feet. In the afternoon, I decided to do some KAP from a 56 inch rok. Now interesting, this is the same kite I used in Gillingham the week before, in less wind, but today it as providing less lift. The only difference was the amount of bow put into the spreaders. Anyway, it was a bit of a struggle. I had Matt flying while I operated the remote. We wandered around as best we could, but more of that later.



Lunch was provided at a local cafe and was excellent, enjoyed by all. Meanwhile others carried on flying.



OK that's the fun bit. Now here comes the criticism. Not enough space guys. If you are going to have a kite festival for the public, you need some space for public flying, but the only usable space was a walkway between the two arenas. More space next year please.

Tests seem OK

Following on from the Will Adams festival, I spent an hour last night testing the USB release of my camera without a problem. I noticed that when the LCD went into power save mode, it took about 3 - 4 seconds from operating the remote to the camera waking and taking the picture, but other than that it went without a hitch. Ah well, we'll try again and this time I'll try to count how many times I think I operate the shutter.

Will Adams Festival - a busy day

What started out looking like it may be a struggle, turned into a really successful day. When we arrived in the morning, we had been allocated an arena that stretched along one side of the field. Unfortunately, the wind direction meant that we were in the lea of some rather large horse chestnut trees and was blowing diagonally across the arena. Never mind, we'll just bomb the inoccent passers buy. We got the club gazebo up, then concentrated on getting teddy dropping set up. With the wind direction as it was, a long launch of a pair of stacked rokkakus was needed to get into the clearer air. But once up, the kites stayed there for the rest of the day. Whilst Bill tested gear, everyone else concentrated on getting out a display of kites.





With a bit of help from my friends, I managed to get a flotail delta and a 56 inch rokkaku up into the airstream where they were quite stable. But by now, with the crowds begining to gather it was becomeing difficult to launch from outside the arena. But the sun came out, and we spent the afternoon under clear blue skies.

After a while, I decided to try some KAP, so used the rokkaku that was already flying to carry the rig. This was going to be at relatively low level. Whilst wandering around, I was asked to move by the guy who was about to do a birds of prey demonstration. Interesting that birds of prey with very keen eyesight can't spot a kite line. Anyway, happy to oblige I moved away and got a couple of pics from the other side of the arena.



Meanwhile, the guys back at base were doing a roaring trade keeping the public interested in kites and handing out fliers and cards. A lot of genuine interest was shown, which makes a refreshing change. Bill was also doing a roaring tade with bear dropping. After a delicious lunch of noodles with ginger, I decided to go out and have another go from higher up. I must have speant a good hour wandering around, though I wasn't really taking a lot of photos as I speant a huge amount of time chatting to people who were interested in what I was doing - and surprised that I would trust a camera to a kite. See if you can spot the people in this photo who have spotted the camera.



A day not without incident. And I have to spend some time this week checking the trigger mechanism, as I am not sure it is firing every time. But a good day all the same.

Kites over Capstone 2009

Phew, that was hard work! Not the kite festival, uploading some photos to Flickr. It took three attempts to get them uploaded, and it was only 15 images!

Anyway, enough of a rant. Sunday was Kites over Capstone, a fun day at an event that, until 3 weeks ago was cancelled. Then it was suddenly resurrected. I have to say, the council did a sterling job in getting everything laid on in 3 weeks, and are committed to having the event agian next year, but with a bit more time for planning this time!

So what was it like. Well, as I drove over boxley hill, I could see the kites in the distance. By the time I drove into the park, they were all back on the ground! It was to be like that for a couple of hours until we finally gots some decent wind as it shifted around a bit. Eventually there was enough for me to stick a camera onto a rokaku and try to get some photos. But I wasn't allowed to fly where I wanted to be! "You can't fly that there." "Why not?" "Because it is a designated walking area" What utter nonsense. Eventually the council relented and let people fly and enjoy themselves. In the meantime I took a few photos of the ground and some kites.



Then a little later on, I decided to give my new pole an outing. I was quite surprised at how heavy the camera was on the end of the pole, how much the pole flexed, and how much the camera caught the breeze and tried to pull everything out of my hands. But I had a good wander round and managed to capture some of the goings on at the event.

Completed and tested pole kit

Well I promised I would add more as I completed the PAP mount. Today, I finished it off by opening up the holes that go over the poles so that it would fit on the bottom 6 sections. The mount now fits at the very top of the top section, which I've wrapped with insulating tape just to stop the mount wearing the pole. After all, insulating tape is relatively cheap and easy to replace compared to a £100 carp pole.

This is what the mount looks like



As you can see it is very simple.

Next was time for a test drive. On a very windy day, I decided not to use the bottom two sections of the pole, taking off about 3 metres of height. But it was plenty difficult to control the pole as the wind blew across from the garage roof. Here is one view of part of our back garden, the lower deck with swing seat and water feature. You can see the table made out of an old morello cherry tree stump behind the swing seat, and the area on the right where the washing pole stands is ready to be paved.



Not bad for a first attempt.

Moving to wards PAP

I'v ebeen thinking about it for some time now, and finally decided to take the plunge and set up for Pole Aerial Photography (PAP). My Canon G9 is ideally suited to PAP as it is CHDK compatible and so I can run an intervalometer script on it quite easily.

The first step is to acquire a suitable pole. Typically poles come in at 5, 6 and 7 metres in fibreglass, then start moving towards carbon for the longer poles. The two different types are the telecsopic style, and the fit over style, which doesn't have the tendency to collapse unexpectidely, so is a better choice for this application. Looking on Cris Benton's site shows that 11 metres seems to be the length of choice, and typically the top two sections need to be discarded as too flexible. Some research on the internet shows the cheapest poles to be available from Decathlon. But further research shows they don't seem to be stock items and have to be ordered in, which is inconvenient. A search on ebay shows that 11 metre poles are available at just under £100 including postage. So taking the plunge a Shakespear pole is ordered, which arrived a day or so later via courier.

The first surprise is just how long the pole is in its collapsed state. It is as tall as me at qbout 1.8 metres. Having errected the pole, I decided to try using all but the very top section. This is partly because I don't have drill bit large enough to fit the third section. So I set about making a simple mount for the camera. This is fabricated using left over aluminium from the cradle for my KAP rig. The mount only took a couple of hours to create - I did say it was simple - and the rig is mounted onto the pole. The test shows that there is a bit too much flexibility to be comfortable, so I will need to pop out and get some larger drill bits to open up the holes in the rig so I can mount it onto the pole slightly lower down. So tomorrow I'll go out and buy a slightly larger drill bit and modify the rig to how I want.