Digital Camera Kite Rig

This was a horrible failure, heres what happened...

The idea seemed simple enough: dangle a balanced weather vane camera mount below a high-lift parafoil kite. This was going to be one of those impromtu cool Sunday afternoon projects. OK - First felonys first : steal a political sign from someones yard. The stuff these signs is called CoreFlute and its absolutley wonderful... and EXPENSIVE so steal it. Ok if you have a conscience - wait till after an election then grab all you get get - you'll be helping the volunteers clean up = win win.

Choppy-do! No measurements, just cut grooves to interlock.

Oh yeah, just likee that! Slap on layers of packing tape and a bunch of cable ties and your good to go. Oh, I forgot pictures of the camera platform. Its just a 2"x2" flat piece of pine that had two holes drilled at either end so it can be cable tied into place on the big blue stick.

Ummm, YUP I'm a wimp. Decided to test run this sucker with a equally weighted object of no use. I used my old Blackberry. Its extended b attery upgrade made it the perfect candidate to simulate the weight of my Canon SD400. Theres the rig ready for bridaling.

I put the long skinny piece of Coreflute so the, the, whatever you wanna call this thing, would hang down naturally. Um, one last concern to be solved...

I looped the left kite bridal through a tape loop as a bakup in case any of the Coreflute broke. Genius! Uh, not so fast...

As most of my life is executed with a camera at the quick - I figured launching a kite that has so much lift it drags me through the sand, would not hinder my ability to operate my second digital camera. The camera is slung over my sholder and held with the right hand along with the right bridal. Set to infinity focus and multiframe shot mode I was ready for lift off.

Here goes with the yank launch. Oh no! The initail weight of the rig collapses alll the parafoil cells on the right hand side making the left side inflate and spiral clockwise.

..and continue clockwise. Notice the right hand string shooting off to the upper left - nowhere NEAR the direction of the kite. Thats because the camera rig was left on the ground and the Blackberry has hit the ground once and id being slingshot clockwise with a huge radius! JUST before the phone slams into the ground again, you can see the parafoil is starting to inflate. These things inflate like an airbag going off... super fast!

We are up up and the heaviy Blackberry is safely suspended by my "just in case" loop. The kite, when completly overhead, is a pleasent 300ft high. Wait, The phone is moving.

Crap, I can hear the high-pitched "whyyyyzzzzz" of the camera accelerating down the string, time to press the camera's multishot button

Ok I'm not a total scardy-cat but I now realize this is like a one pound rock being dropped on my from a 7 story building, all except with the guide line theres A 100% CHANCE ITS GONNA SMASH INTO MY LEFT HAND! The kite to too expensive to let go but I begin to brace for impact.

Ok this thing it FLYING down the string. A can't drop the camera cause I'll need images to show the doctors what happened when I go to the ER.

Actually kinda iffy on whether or not I should just drop the lines - I'm gonna get hit in no less the 1/4 of a second.

AAAHHHHHHHGGGH!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, It really hurt. Somehow the PDA managed to smash 3 knuckles and my wrist, seems physically impossible. No blood though.

Ok then, looks like this really is'nt the way to get aerial footage of my house..... You have seen the last of this project!
Stay Tuned.