Rokkaku solution

[Note: this entry was made 4-25-2006 and back-dated.]



Location: Germantown Soccer Complex
Kite: 80" Rokkaku
Lighting: Sunny
Winds: 6 mph (measured)
Images: 189 images, mostly boring.

A few weeks ago I had trouble getting the kite to fly at Rio and at Home. I got some good advice on tuning the Rok's bridle from Cris Benton's Forum. So the plan for today was to experiment with bridle settings and see if the Rok wouldn't behave better.

The winds were fairly light but constant at about 6 mph. (Measured with an anemometer.) Once I got the kite assembled, I played around with the bridle holding the top and bottom parts separately. Once I found the point where the kite flew at the highest angle, I set the line attachment point there. I had to move it up quite a bit from its previous position. So the advice from the forum was right -- the earlier problems were caused because the bridle was set too low.

Of course, with the bridle now correctly set up, the kite flew eagerly even though the winds were relatively light. Previously I thought I needed at least 10mph winds to fly this kite but when adjusted correctly it flies great at 6. It was flying so well, in fact, I decided to put the camera on the line. I let it out above the pond by the soccer complex and shot the full motion sequence. I got 189 images in all. Most are boring, of course. From the camera's vantage point, the view was dominated by the parking lot and the black waters of the pond. And the shots that included the surrounding area are dull because the grass was brown. Once shot did include the King Barn and its playground. That was probably the best of the bunch.

One final note from this flight: adjacent shots have no overlap. I'll need to adjust the motion control program if I ever want to create panoramas from this rig.