Kite Aerial Photography of a Wildlife Management Area

This coming fall I plan to do some hunting in a local wildlife management area. the location is so large that walking to any particular location within the management area isn't practical. Motorized vehicles are not allowed so most people use mountain bikes. I found that while Google earth was very helpful, it was still very limited. So I thought perhaps doing some kite aerial photography of the area would be of benefit to me. So I put my rig in my back pack and headed out. I photographed only one of two locations. Next time I'll get the other area which is further north from where these photos were taken.

Broke my camera but not during KAP

After three years of participating in kite aerial photography and taking thousands and thousands of photos, my camera took a plummet and broke. But it wasn't while flying from my kite.

Actually my wife and I were on a river cruise boat. The camera, with strap around my wrist, slipped from my hand, smacked against the boat railing and broke. So now I have to get a replacement in order to get my KAP off the ground again. Looking forward to it.

For those who may be worried about damaging your camera while flying it from a kite, don't. First of all, I have a 9 foot delta kite. When there's not enough wind to fly I can feel the slack in the line and know it won't lift the camera. When the wind is to strong, I know it also by feel. The range of wind speeds good for flying is fairly wide so it's rare to not be able to.

Once I get the kite above the tops of the trees it will fly steady. Then I attach my camera and rig and release more line. I never have any problems or worries about keeping it up in the air. Only once in a while will I see the camera slowly start descending. When this happens I just pull in the slack and the kite grabs the breeze again, pulling the camera back up.

Have a nice flight.

Learn all about CHDK

the Cannon Hacker's Development Kit allows you to Hack the memory card of a Cannon camera to temporarily make changes to the way the camera behaves, without making any changes to the camera itself. This is great for kite aerial photography because you can set up your camera to take pictures repeatedly, as well as to do a number of other things that can be very useful for KAP. Here's a book that explains all about CHDK:

Kite aerial photography shot of the day 06

Couple walking in the park.

Kite aerial photography - how to prevent line twist

Your kite's line can become severely twisted over the course of several flights.  I came up with a simple way to alleviate a lot of the line twist from my kite line by adding a simple piece of fishing equipment, a Ball Bearing Swivel.

For kite aerial photography I use a swivel with 200-lb. Test Strength so that there's no way that it could brake or bend. As the kite flies, the swivel turns to undo any twisting that may be in the line.

However you'll find that twisting can occur between yourself and the anchoring point of your rig. This twisting occurs when you allow your line to come off your spool one way, but you wind it back on a different way. For example if you allow your line to spin off your spool, the way toilet paper spins off a roll, but you then wind it back on to the spool by wrapping it, hand over fist, from the side of the spool, each wrap will put one twist in the line.

This is not to say your doing something wrong. It would take me a very long time to bring my kite down if I choose to roll the line back onto the spool. But to remove the twisting that I add to the line between myself and the anchor point of my KAP rig, I'll bring the rig down and remove it from the line then I will occasionally, every third or fourth flight, send my kite back up to nearly the full length of the line on my spool. I'll let it fly without the rig attached. The swivel will remove nearly all the twist in the line. Winding it back down will again put a little twist in the line, but the swivel will remove that twist also on my next flight.

Kite aerial photography shot of the day 05

Brevard Community College baseball practice.

  This was a really windy day and it was hard to get my kite back down again.  One way to better know the wind conditions at the very spot where you intend to fly your kite is to use a handheld wind meter.  You can get an accurate measurement of ground level wind speed.  It's a handy tool to help figure out if your kite will lift your rig or if you need to reconsider your plans of launching your largest kite.  Note that in the background of this photo you can see the Indian River and the Eau Gallie Causeway.

Kite aerial photography shot of the day 04

Your host, KAPing the Indialantic boardwalk.  After viewing this photo I regretted having worn white.  I think the shirt is to bright for the photo.  I should have worn some other color.