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.

Rig modified (again)

Following on from my last posting about the frustrations of my Optio S12, I've changed camera and modified the rig yet again.

I decided that the S12 and GentLED were a lost cause, so decided I would up the ante and replace the S12 with a W80. This is a waterproof and shockproof camera, which is a bonus, but more importanly for me it includes a built in intervalometer that can be set to a specidied number of shots, or to continue shooting until it the card is full, the battery dies or you stop it manually. The interval can be set to anything from 10 seconds up to 24 hours. Once again Digigood on eBay was my source and the camera was delivered promptly (must remember to leave feedback!

So on inspection, the camera was a different form to the S12. On the S12 the tripod mount was roughly in the centre. On the W80 it is at the far right as viewed from the rear. This gave me a little bit of a problem as I had saved weight in my rig by only having the camera mount large enough to reach the mounton the S12, so I needed to extend this down. So I cut the existing mounting plate off and bolted on a new, larger mounting plate. Fortunately, none of this is visible when the camera is installed. While I was at it, I drilled out the rivets to the gentLED bracket and removed that.

The W80 is slightly larger and heavier than the S12, but fortunately I don't think I've upset the balance of the rig.

While I was at it, I modified the picavet slightly. Originally, the lines had been running through the eyes in the cross. My friend Ramon Palares from Holland suggested that I add in some split rings to hang the rig from as these have smoother edges than the cross itself and so will reduce the likelihood of fraying.

Pictures of the new rig to follow.

Oh what a frustrating day

I had a day off yesterday, and following on from some problems I'd had with the IR shutter release on my Optio, I decided to redesign my rig based on some very good advise from the folks over on Cris Benton's KAP forum.

So having quickly modified the rig, I then proceeded to spend several hours trying to get the IR sensor to work. It seemed that if I had the remote trigger in fron of the lens then the shutter would release consistently, but if I pointed the remote at the sensor, triggering became much less reliable. It didn't matter whether I shaded the whole lot, built a canopy, or whatever, getting anything more than one release in ten was just impossible. So in the end, I decided it was a "feature" of the camera and decide to look for an alternative approach. I found an Optio W80 on eBay. The W80 includes an interval timer, but no IR, so I can manage with setting the camera to click away on its own.

Look out for an S10 on eBay soon!

(I'll upload images of the modified rig when I get a minute.

Issues uncovered and problems solved?

Last week in Hythe I discovered a couple of issues with both my RC and autokap rigs. I think I have solved both of them this week...

The R/C rig only seemed to by operating the shutter on every thrid operation. I've been experimenting all week with SDM and can't seem to get this behaviour to change with any consistency. I've followed the various suggestions on the interweb but to no avail. So in the end, or in frustration, I've gone back to plain vanilla CHDK. So this means I've got to run a script to operate via USB, but I can live with that, and now I'm back operational with the shutter operating on every operation :)

the autokap rig was a bit more tricky to resolve. As I mentioned last week, the camera seemed to stop shooting after about 10 shots when in the air. I experimented with the camera on the ground this week and it seemed to shoot the first couple of shots, then become very inconsistent. No matter what I did, I still couldn't get any consistency. So I asked for some guidance on the KAP discussion forum. Initial advise led me to believe I had a faulty Gentled. Then someone asked if I had the camera set for manual focus or fixed at infinity. So I tried some further experiments. Certainly the gentled wasn't faulty as I could clearly see the IR led flashing. But with the camera focus fixed at infinity, the operation of the shutter was at best random and at worst non-existant. So I switched the camera over to manual focus with focus set to infinity. Immediately the camera started to respond to every flash of the gentled. I also tried it on auto and the shutter continued to respond. Interesting behaviou, but problem solved, so I can go away happy :)

First steps in AutoKAP

Sunday 31st January 2010 saw my first tentative steps into the AutoKAP arena, which wasn't entirely successful! For Christmas I'd got the various components I needed to build a simple autokap rig. It is powered by a small 3v electric motor with gearing that brings it down to about 2rpm. The rig is designed to take a Pentax Optio S10 camera and the shutter is fired by a GentLED auto. The battery pack is mounted behind the motor.



Having built it, and checked the balance, I found that I needed to move the battery pack slightly in order to achieve good balance with the camera.

Anyway. So off to Hythe I trotted on Sunday afternoon to meet up with some kite flyers. I wasn't too hopeful as there was no breeze at home. But when I got to Hythe I was pleasantly surprised. Very cold but gloriously sunny day with a light breeze that grew a bit once you'd got out of the turbulence.

So with a 78" rokkaku in the air, I attached the rig and did all the sensible gorund checks. Then let it gain height. Certainly the rig was turning, but there was no indication of the shutter firing. So I left it flying for about 10 minutes. Given that the shutter should fire every 10-15 seconds, I should get between 40 and 60 photographs. By now the rig had stopped roatating. So I brought it down to earth and checked a few things. Well the rig batteries seemed to be flat. Disappointing. I know they are not knew, but I would hope they managed a bit better than that. I'll have to check the current draw of the motor. OK. What about the photos. 13! Only 13! what had gone wrong. Well it looks as though the shutter doesn't trigger on every release of the GentLED. I need to check this out. It could be the position of the GentLED or it could be the time it takes the camera to recycle after storing a shot. I will need to do some experiments on this. But out of the 13 shots, I had three that weren't blurred. This one is the Dukes Head pub, just across the road from the field we were flying on.



OK so having given up on AutoKAP for now, time to try R/C KAP again. Again I've been a busy boy, having converted my rig to use 2.4GHz from 35 MHz. I've also swithed my camera (a Canon G9) from plain vanilla CHDK to SDM. So here lies a problem. With CHDK, I could start up my USB script and every time I signalled the shutter it would fire. With SDM the same script seems to only fire on the third trigger, and then only if the triggers are in quick succession. It seems as though the first trigger wakes the camera, but it isn't sleeping, the second trigger operates focus, like a half press, and the third operates the shutter. Again I need to check this out. Unfortunately the documentation is a bit out of date as I am using the 1.82 release. But it looks as if I may need to change the focus setting to a digiscope setting and also switch off camera sync. but it looks like switching off the sync needs to be done before every shot, so must be managed in the script. Anyway, having figured out what was heppening, I happily clicked away and got a much higher success rate. This one is of Hythe town centre viewed across the Royal Military Canal.

October/November

Hello folks, have you missed me? Bet not. I've not been entirely inactive, but changes at work have meant I've got more travelling to do which is eating into my time.

Anyway, Saturday 31st saw KKF doing its bit for light up the sky. We were in Margate and battling with little wind and sea mist, so ended up with two soaked kites again, but did manage to raise over £60 for Children in Need, which is great.

Sunday 8th November saw KKF in Canterbury for our regular fly in. Again it looked like low wind was going to spoil the day, but ultimately the wind picked up enough and it turned into a good flying day. Low level turbulence was a bit of a problem, but I got a conyne up to about 600 feet and it was quite stable up there. Not entirely sure it was legal though as I doubt I was 1000 feet below the cloud base. There was a big sag in the line, but tremendous pull, it would have been great to get a camera up there, but I hadn't come equipped! Silly boy.

Next weekend we've got a sports kite workshop in Tonbridge, so we'll have to see how that goes.

OSOW 2009

After some sunshine on Saturday and the promise of more sun next week, Sunday 11th October was met with cloudy skies. But never mind, its OSOW time to go out flying! So around about lunchtime I headed off to Singleton Environment in Ashford where Kent Kite Flyers had scheduled their OSOW meet.

When I got there, the clouds were fairly high and there was a good stiff breeze. Lots of flotail deltas in the sky, so I decided to join in and soon had one of my own flying high amongst the rest.

Time to set up for some KAP. As the breeze was brisk, I chose to use a 56 inch rokkaku. This is a nice kite when the wind is up a bit. I launched the kite and pegged it down and went back to the car to get the camera rig. With the rig set up and attached to the line, time to try to KAP the visitor centre. Now I know I'm a bit dumb at times, but I had a funny feeling that the camera was not shooting. Of course it helps if you enable CHDK and start the USB script! So having been clicking away for a while, I recovered the camera, and enabled the script. Slightly more confident, I let out line, but we now seemed to be in a lull in the breeze, Still I managed to get high enough to get some photos.





As the wind had dropped a bit, I brought the camera and kite down and decided to have another go with a flowform 30. It was a bit troublesome to launch but soon gathered wind and climbed. By the time I was ready to attach the kite again, the wind had picked up a bit again, and the kite was pulling a bit. This time, I made abso9lutely sure that the camera was working before letting it climb!



So I launched with some confidence. But the kite was not flying with any stability and it really wasn't a very pleasant experience. I did manage to get a couple of photos that weren't too blurred, but the rest were rubbish.



Recovery became the next issue, as the wind was up, the kite was dancing a bit and the line was tight. But with the kite firmly anchored, it was a case of walk down, pull in and tie off until the camera was low enough to take off. The first spots of damp started to drizzle down.So I concentrated on geting the camera put away, and a couple of bits back to the car, leaving the flowform lifting a pig and the flotail flying. While at the car, the wind suddenly dropped, and two flotails suddenly appeared above. One (mine) landed in the trees, and the other (Gerties) settled over the fence in the school playing fields. Both being soaking wet, I retreived Gert's flowtail, and moved the line out of the road, then retrieved my own. Both were sopping wet.

So walking back to the field, I found my flowform had also landed in the hedge and the pig was also resting in the bushes. Bill volunteered to reover the kite, while I recovered the pig. Again, both were saturated! With the kites and laundry recovered, it was time to wind in line and help others recover their kites and line beofre heading for home. So tonight, there is lots of material hinging up to dry in various parts of the house much to my wife's annoyance.