November 3, 2014. Clear and cool with a light breeze – a perfect morning for field work. Students from Professor Pittman’s GEOG 331 – Exploring Maps and Geographic Technologies course gathered in the parking lot at the north end of … Continue reading
For Folsom Lake College’s 10th anniversary celebration, we rigged up the balloon to stream video to a monitor on the ground, using a custom rig with a POV camera, battery, and transmitter, all housed in an apple juice bottle rig. … Continue reading
With the easing of the helium shortage, we finally acquired a tank or two of the noble gas, and headed up to the El Dorado Center yesterday to launch our new imaging platform. First flights are always a little nerve-wracking, … Continue reading
~5 hrs. 45 mins. of work in ~7 mins. … Continue reading
On Friday, April 4th, Jason and I went out to Cronan Ranch Regional Trails Park to do some recon, his new puppy in tow (and eventually in the pack when she tired of hiking). Though we brought kites, rain and … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
New kites arrived. Pictured here is a 12′ Riviera Highlighter from Into the Wind, and we received the double lifter sled 30 as well. We hope to get some images from above Mormon Island, a local historical mining community. A … Continue reading
Nice breeze this afternoon, so I gathered the kite and KAP rig, found a colleague – Kevin Pipkin (Professor, Mathematics and all-around good guy) – and headed down to the wetlands to fly, this time with the GoPro, set to … Continue reading
The weather was pretty good for KAP yesterday, with variable ground level winds somewhere in the 2-5 mph range, so we took the 9′ delta down to the wetlands north of the college to test out the new iPhone rig. … Continue reading
Flew the 9′ delta this afternoon in the wetlands below the college, and sent the NIR camera up for the first time, resulting in photos that look something like this: Lessons learned: 1. Flying solo is more difficult than flying … Continue reading