It was Friday the 13th, the kind of day the superstitious worry about and the kind that I figure is just another day. The wind was pretty good, enough to pick up our Flowform 16 kite with our camera rig. We went out to North by Northwest of Landfill and set out our ground markers [images when our internet gets back up]. With a pretty good wind from the west, we got the kite up and the camera rig above the roadside population. We took two runs along the road, once south and once north (higher and lower). Overall, it was a good run.
Until…
Until we plugged the camera into the computer. No images. Hrm.
We were using a new setup that day. Stuart had bought a radio-control set that we hooked up to the camera. It seemed to work just fine at the farmhouse… but not at the site. At this point, Julie and I were painting the kite string (so we could tell how much line was let out). Testing the RC stuff again, it SHOULD have worked fine. We’re not sure why it didn’t.
Cut to the next day. We left the string out to dry when we left in the evening and between our departure and Stuart’s taking the line in a few hours later, some cheeky rodent decided that our artificial string would be a tasty snack and gnawed through it in a few places. Friday the 13th strikes again.
And now today. The 200-lb test line has been painted and is currently drying. I’ve worked out one of the problems with our camera rig (before, the camera would take a picture all the time: all that was needed was putting it on a different control stick. [images for clarity later]). I can now control both the Canon S70 and the new Canon Digital Rebel XTi (with The Nifty Fifty, a 50mm prime lens. It’s a touch long, but our benefit in megapixels and in general quality should be worth it) with the press of a control stick.
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