Detling Hill (again)

Well the day didn't go entirely as planned. The intention ws to fly at the Hook and Hatchet pub in Hucking. When we got there, we found that there was a power cable runnign across the pub's field, and the field behind the pub, which is on Woodland Trust land had a flock of sheep with their lambs. We decided that it would do us no favours to disturb the sheep and upset the farmer, so we retired to the pub an considered our options. Just down the road is Detling Hill, so we repaired there for an afternoons flying.

This turned out to be a great call as the day was clear and a good breeze (for the most part) allowed me to carry out more tests on my autoKAP rig. Recently I bought myself a GPS data logger and I've been playing with this a bit. I did some tests with a camera wedged into the windscreen of my car and the datalogger beside it, and got some excellent results. So today was to be the logger's first flight. It records altitude - above sea level - which is good fun too, especially if you load things into Google Earth and look at it in 3d mode. Anyway enough of this.

So to start with, the wind was very light and I decided to try a large rokkaku. This flew well, and after adjusting the bridle a bit, we were ready to go. the kite flew out of hand easily and took line and with the camera attached, continued to climb. I had the camera set on a 2 minute delay, then taking 60 photos at 10 second intervals. After a while, the kite started misbehaving. Having had about 10 minute flight I was ready to come down anyway. So having brought kite and camera down, a check showed that the top spreader bow had released, hence the unstable flight. With the kite fixed I let it fly a while longer.

After that I flew a double conyne delta with a long tail, and then, as the wind had climbed a little, decided to try a smaller rokkaku with the camera. So off we went again and got another trip of about 10 minutes, after which the batteries turning the rig were just about exhausted. So I can get about 20 minutes flying time out of a pair of 2400mha rechargeable batteries - all good information. Having brought changed the batteries, we set off again for another 60 shot flight. I decided to try moving towards the edge of the hill, but updrafts and turbulence coming off the downs meant the flight was not pleasant, so I headed off in the other direction again.

So having had three successful flights and learnt a few things about the autoKAP rig, I definitely think it was a successful day out. Lessons learned today:

The 2 minute delay is long enough to attach the camera to the rig and gain height before the phot sequence starts
60 photos gives a 5 minute flight time, which is plenty adequate
Each set of batteries will power the panmotor of the rig for about 20 minutes
Don't turn the GPS logger off between flights - you'll forget to turn it on again!

Out of the 18 photos taken, there were lots that were good enough to keep. I've posted some of the best onto Flickr, and a couple are below. the only problem was any shots into the sun, which were blown out. Will have to wait for later in the year, when the sun is higher, to get any decent photos in the direction of Maidstone.