Bill's KAP Page

Fredericksburg '04

4/4/04

This spring I'm trying to get shots of old town Fredericksburg Va, with results that are... um... 'poor', lets just leave it at that. Here's the best shot so far, taken from an estimated altitude of 4 feet (1.22m).

6/21/04

Poor winds and low light, but I got a few shots of the Rappahannock River (near where George Washington threw that dollar). Max altitude was a only 50', but I couldn't find a higher wind down by the river. The new, lighter rig worked well.

7/10/04

Meanwhile, back at the Rappahannock... No wind for some time, I switch to balloons (zero-wind kite?). I bought three large mylar balloons filled with helium, but they wouldn't lift the new rig (about 9 oz.). Removing the cross and yoke reduced the load to about 6.5 oz., but it still wouldn't lift. I put just the camera itself on the line and used the built in 10 second timer to give the balloon a little time to rise before the camera takes the shot. I had no real control over the camera's aim, and the camera bounced around a lot, distorting most of the pictures, but I got two decent shots.

I decided to try the camera's video (AVI) mode to allow a higher flight. Resolution is low (624x480), and this mode gets lots of motion distortion, but I get 30+ seconds of flight time. Watching the video makes people nauseas, so I won't post it here, but check out some of the stills below.
River Road, with varying levels of distortion:

The next day, I tried the balloons out in front of my house, check it out here.

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