Berck and beyond

Well its been almost a month since my last update, and it has been a pretty disappointing month for many reasons. Weather conditions in dear old blighty for kite flying have varied between c**p and just plain awful. High winds snow, hail, rain. you name it we got it. there might have been a little bit of sun in there somewhere too.

Anyway. Over the easter weekend, the sewing bug caught me, so I decided to make myself a Fled. Designed by Michael Anderson and Brooks Leffler for low wind KAP. So the kite was completed and had its maiden voyage at East Malling towards the end of March. Winds had dropped to almost nothing so most of the day was spent trying to get the kite aloft, but eventually it stuck to the sky and proved a very capable performer. Here's a picture from that day



Then a couple of weeks later it was off to Berck for the annual kitefest. Unfortunately Berck was to prove a bit of a disappointment this year. The weather was bitterly cold for most of the week, but th eproblem was the lack of flyers there this year. Don't know what the problem was, but flyers stayed away in droves. No problemw ith the public though, it was school holidays so the place was packed with normal people.

Anyway, I had a problem with my camera. I tried to get some KAp in on the last Sunday, and spent some time in the evening wandering around the beach by the large old hospital complex just in front of the lighthouse. I got good lift from my kite, the radio control was working fine, the rig performed well, the camera shutter was firing. What could possibly go wrong. Well when I retreived the camera and looked at the images they were all dreadfully over exposed. In most the picture was bearly recognisable. And in many it was just a whiteout. So waht was the problem? Well looking at the exif data all the images were shot at 1/250 shutter speed, instead of the 1/2000 the camera was set at. I've tried it since and had much the same results. So it looks like the camera is no good. I've always been a little disappointed with this Powershot S60, so I'm currently looking out for a new camera on ebay, trying to pick up a bargain pro 1 or G6. If I get a new camera, then I will also be building a new rig, so I've just ordered up some aluminium and we'll see how we get on.