Fellow KAPers, [changed title to just Ireland for this message thread.....Italy is a whole new story....stay tuned]

I am heading back across the pond (Atlantic Ocean) and planning on doing some KAPing when not working (weather permitting).

If anyone is interested in joining up with me please send along a Flickr mail.

Very rough schedule:
- Friday - Jan 9 (two hour window) 11 AM to 1 PM - Urban KAP in Dublin (Trinity or Custom House)
- Saturday - Jan 10 (all day) - West Coast of Ireland (near O'Brien's tower)
- Sunday - Jan 11 (all day) - West Coast of Ireland (near Loop Head or Cliffs of Moher)

- Sunday - Jan 18 - Rome, Italy
- Monday - Jan 19 - Rome, Italy

Bit of a storm brewing over Ireland. Should be interesting!



I did get a few good KAP shots over Dublin today...not as many as I wished for...a bit of a story to tell...will post later this weekend.

Lessons learned some time come in small SD packages.....

This past week I had a short fixed window of time to try some urban KAPing in Dublin Ireland.

In the end a few good pictures were obtained.....it was not easy....

I arrived at the River Liffey near the Custom's house and did a brief recon of the area.

The KAP session started with a few issues....

- selected a tight launch site near the river bank (about 5 square meters)

- during the setup of the Dopero kite....one of the stitching points holding the top of one of the vertical frames pulled out.....

- performed a field jury rig to repair the pocket stitch points with some gorilla tape

- launched the kite after two attempts into ~15 knot wind.... the kite quickly rose to ~150 feet...

- given the light and variable wind and the flight path over water I selected my Canon A570IS camera and attached the rig to the kite line

- turned on the camera to select the appropriate WW KAP script parameters......but.....I could not get the CHDK menu to come up....after a bit of fumbling around....I tried to restart the camera with CHDK....but could not get CHDK to boot.....I opened up the camera and looked at the SD chip.....my "small package" and discovered the SD chip did not have CHDK loaded...... I had recently changed my SD chip inventory around to support my new (used) Canon G9, putting CHDK for the G9 on all my 4 Gb SD chips and (I thought) putting CHDK for the A570IS on all of my 8 Gb chips. The 8 Gb SD chip that I was using did not have CHDK loaded....I think I reformatted the SD card and forgot to load CHDK back on the card...

The fun was just beginning...
- I pulled out my back pack to select a backup SD card.....all I had were my 4 Gb SD chips (3 of them) all loaded with CDHK for the G9! Not the A570IS

- No problem I thought, I will open up my spare A570IS or my Pentax W60 and use their SD cards (with CDHK preloaded)... or pull out my G9 camera and fly with it (even if a bit heavy for the wind)....next problem....

- I left my spare cameras (A570IS, W60 and the G9) in the car by accident....across the river....in a parking garage.... a 10 minute walk away!....my time windows was now down to 1 hour left....still no pictures...

- I decided to tie off the kite on a rail near the river bank and walk back to get my cameras (a bit of a risk)!

- Upon retrieving my spare cameras and returning to the kite (which was still there flying great) I decided to go with the G9 (as the wind had picked up a bit).

- I got in about 20 minutes of usable flight time....then the wind began to drop.....I used my stratospool to quickly wind in line to keep the rig (and the G9) out of the water....

- Next I switched cameras to the A570IS, loaded CHDK and quickly set the WW KAP script parameters and attached the rig to the line and raised the kite up to start taking pictures.....but

- Upon looking at the photos from the G9 I had about 100 keepers.

- upon looking at the photos from the A570IS...I only had 5 photos....I forgot about a bug with my WW KAP script (when you turn on zoom bracket, still photos and video together the script execution stops upon leaving video mode)....30 minutes of flight time...but only 5 photos about 2 feet off the ground to show for it....

In the middle of all this I had several interested Dubliners stop by to watch and ask questions….and attracted a bit of interest from office workers in a near by building (see photos below). See flicker set here.

All in all – still a fun KAP session….with a few lessons learned!




The wind in Ireland can be stiff. See story below. Kite Over Limerick Ireland (A river runs through it).

As the wind chart at the bottom of this tread shows, winds in Ireland can be a bit stiff (and fickle).

A brief window of clear (definition of clear in Ireland means no heavy rain) weather and light (definition of light in Ireland is 20-25 knots) winds suddenly (and unexpectedly) appeared on Friday afternoon near sunset.

During sunset on Friday I got to fly a 2nd brief KAP session in Limerick Ireland as the people of Limerick moved to Thomond Park for the Rugby match between Munster and Sale Sharks (Munster won 37 to 14). A few of my co-workers (from around the world) got to see the game in a local Limerick pub. Rugby is a tough game (well suited to the Irish!).

The brief KAP session lasted ~45 minutes and ended in a light rain. I flew my Dopero as the wind was light at the start....but picked up to 25 knots by the end of the flight (putting quite a bit of force on the line!). Most of the shots are a bit on the dark side and high ISO due to falling light (sunset). The stress on the reel proved to be a near shattering event. I will share this lesson learned on a separate thread.

I had several people (supporters from both Munster and Sale Sharks) come up and ask lots of questions. I put several to work holding the line. As seems to be the norm, my kite was flying out over a rapidly moving river (River Shannon). The risk is always right in front of you! The video shots really show the pace and sound of the water flowing by.

Departing Ireland for Italy was a wind experience in it self. We had severe turbulence with the plane bouncing back and forth (while still on the ground at the gate!) due to wind gust over 60 knots. Got to Rome in one piece. as well as my revisit to Rome Italy (with a whole new set of wonderful KAP shots)….stay tuned

Pictures and video collected during the brief KAP sessions in Limerick Ireland were worth the effort (see picture below and the set on flickr here).




All,

I have continued this story under a new thread for "Lessons Learned".

See link below:

http://steel.ced.berkeley.edu/cris/kap/discuss/comments.php?DiscussionID=1881

Scott,

See thread above for additional details.

I am planning on building a new modified Stratospool as the one I was using was just a prototype of my full design. Given my extensive testing (and failures) I have a few improvements planned.