It’s been pretty quiet on the flying front this winter, but we’ve got a field day planned for Cronan Ranch tomorrow, so I took a few minute to mod the picavet. In the prior incarnation, the bucket was not attached to the picavet cross, but was instead sandwiched between the cross and the camera mount. As such, every time the camera mount had to be changed, the bucket came with it, making for some annoying alignment issues.
To remedy, I cut away the middle of the top of the bucket (to make camera attachment a little easier, and to make the camera screen visible from outside of the bucket – the camera is always pointed straight down, and without access to the screen it’s sometimes difficult to tell if the camera is firing ), and attached the bucket directly to the picavet cross via two machine screws. Much better. Let’s hope the predicted winds arrive tomorrow…
[…] enthusiastic about it. We brought it back to the ground, changed the 300# line to 100#, removed the bucket, and sent it back up. These weight tweaks worked well, and the balloon pulled the load gently but […]
[…] Did a quick SketchUp model of a picavet and printed it for a BAP day on Wednesday. Much lighter than the setup it replaced. […]