Category: Cameras

Good movie from kite…

Far too long since I’ve written anything.  I’ve been quite busy, mostly with baking activities that I’ll have to ‘backfill’ as I get a chance…

But yesterday, finally got a decent day to put the blue parafoil up at the Tauranga waterfront, along with the GoPro camera.  I had, earlier in the day, ‘re-rigged’ the Picavet camera stabilising rig (see an earlier posting) using a heavier line – not that it needed to be stronger, but I was getting tired of untangling the finer line I had originally used.

Click on this image to see the larger version so you can spot my kite off to the right above the wharf!

What I was hoping was that I could have it in the air long enough to get recorded by a Tauranga webcam.  That camera takes a picture every 10 minutes through the day – and I figured if I had the kite up, it should be visible when I get home to check that webcam.  And it was – you can see the blue shape appearing to float above the wharf off to the right side of the picture!

The flight itself was not particularly long (a  bit over 4 minutes of film) and somewhat limited as I only had a small roll of line, so couldn’t put it especially high into the air.  Given it is central city and not a very big place to fly a kite, that’s probably a good thing.

You can see me launching the kite.  I had it relatively low in the air, up until the 3 minute mark when I have let out all the line.  I see there’s something of a scratch of some such on the lens, just to the left of centre – I try not to look at it…

And naturally, when I was finished, I went to have a beer at the Crown and Badger!

 

Camping and kites…

We took our caravan up to the Bowentown Motor Camp for two nights last weekend.  Averil spent time fishing, I got to fly some kites.

Finally, a good chance to see the blue parafoil at its best.  Friday’s winds were a bit erratic, but I got both the purple and the blue parafoils flying well.  Never easy to take good photos of kites in the air, as once you get them up high enough, they are just specks on the photo, anyway.  And given it was just a cellphone camera, the kites were generally out of focus (if you click on the image to the right, you will get a better version of it…)

Both kites had substantial amounts of tail, to counteract the gusty wind.  First time I’ve flown the blue parafoil with both the long tail but also the drogue at the end of that.  It looked pretty good!

When I went down to the beach on Saturday ( a 3 minute walk from the caravan) I forgot to take the bag with the tails – so flew the blue parafoil without any tail.  Light but steady wind meant it flew very well, though very sluggish when I raised the camera with it.

The blue parafoil was amazingly responsive – I could let it drop down to not far above the path to the beach.  Then, just pulling in a few metres of line, I could get it to climb rapidly up to nearly overhead.  I think the shallow aerofoil shape has given it this responsiveness – much more than any of the other parafoils I’ve made.

Kite day coming…

Though I’ve not referred to it here much, there is a kite day this coming Sunday at Fergusson Park for Matariki.  I’m not usually much for kite days, as I’m not overly social (!) at the best of times.

There is a predominance of massive (nothing wrong with that…) ‘kites’ that hang from a pilot kite, rather than fly on their own and finally – made by other people.  I think I’m good evidence that you don’t need to know how to sew to make kites – just don’t look too close at the stitching!

But this will be the first I’ve been to when I’m only bringing soft kites.  No sticks (apart from several that are part of the kite messenger).

3 parafoils
4 panflutes
6 parasleds
9 reels of line
1 picavet rig with camera
1 static dropper rig
3 misc droppers
1 ferry with dropper bag
hammer and stakes
1 set of night lights

I’m not counting the silver flowform yet – it hasn’t flown properly.  And the one bit of wind that it could/should have used makes me think the aerofoil shape is not right – and I am in the process of putting some ‘darts’ into the foils near the leading edge, trying to give it more lift than it currently has.

My Picavet rig…

Since I had the blue kite line stretched across the living room to take photos of the ferry, I got out my Picavet rig for a picture, too.

It has a long history – initially developed to provide stability for the (early) camera attempts from hot air balloons, I think.  Here’s a good description of it generally:

https://publiclab.org/wiki/picavet-rigging

And here’s my rig.  It has a plastic base, and uses eye screws for the line to run through.  Better would be some smooth action pulleys.  But I gotta say – you don’t try to take photos from a kite expecting serious stability.  For me at least, it just isn’t going to happen.

But there are other people using more sophisticated systems that can do better.  I’m just happy with any photos – or even poor quality movies! – that I can take from my kites.

Bowentown from the air…

I took this photo in April 2017 while we were camping at Anzac Bay, near Bowentown (north of Tauranga).  Our caravan (and awning) are at the bottom left.  I used the purple parafoil to hoist the kite, using a Picovet rig to try to keep it steady.  This is a screenshot from a movie of the flight…