World Wide KAP Weekend

This weekend is the first World Wide KAP weekend. If you've been reading this blog for a while or checking out our pictures on Flickr, you probably know KAP is kite aerial photography. That is, we KAPpers suspend a camera from a kite line and use the kite to lift the camera skyward giving us a unique perspective on the world. The camera shutter is triggered by some means. There are many many different types of cradles to hold the camera. Some are very simple; some are quite elaborate and allow the KAPper all kinds of control. Many use some kind of radio control - usually adapted from RC airplane gear - to control shutter, vertical tilt and horizontal rotation.

While a view KAPpers use a video downlink so they can see what the camera is pointed at, most of us rely on guess-and-by-golly-I-think-I'm-aiming-at-that-building (or whatever). The downloaded pictures at the end of a KAP session always contain surprises, some good, some...well, not so good. To paraphrase Forest Gump's mother, KAP is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get til you get home.

My personal goal for WWKAP2008 was to KAP some place, some thing, I haven't KAPped before. When our friend/hero/master KAPper Craig was here last month, we talked about KAPping the ruins of the old Spanish lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1886 between what we know as Borinquen and Wilderness beaches. It was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 1918.

KAPping there presents some challenges. First the winds are very gusty and swirly. I've tried KAPping at Borinquen beach before but I've never been able to get a kite up and anywhere near stable enough to launch the camera rig. I hoped that getting farther away from the cliff at Borinquen and up a little off the beach would help. It did but not as much as I'd hoped. The kite flew side-to-side, setting the camera rig swinging like a pendulum. Sometimes the wind seemed to stop taking all the lift at out of the kite. Twice the camera rig crashed to the ground (fortunately no harm done). At one point the kite over-flew me, something it normally doesn't do. I watched, more or less helplessly, as my camera rig sailed over my head and behind me. All I could think of was, "Oh, this isn't good!"

And then there's the little matter of the airplanes. This site is directly off the end of the runway at the Aguadilla airport. Everything coming into Aguadilla flies right over this spot on short final approach. Under other circumstances, I would let the kite fly higher to find more stable air. Can't do that here.

But, hey - if it was easy, everybody would do it. (I seem to be on a roll quoting Tom Hanks' movies today.)

Anyway, all's well that ends well. Kite and camera flew and were recovered successfully. I did get a few pictures of the ruins and there were surprises. The photo above is my favorite. so it was a successful WWKAP weekend for me: successful launch, successful flight and recovery, and I KAPped something I haven't KAPped before. This is a site I will go back to in different light, armed with a little more experience.

You can see more the rest of the lighthouse shots on our Flickr site, and check out the rest of the World Wide KAP weekend photos on the WWKAP Flickr site (www.flickr.com/groups/wwkapweekend). There are some truly amazing photos.