A couple weeks since my last outing, the leaves on the trees were a bit more colorful, and Chancellors Run Park was calling me for another KAP session. My goals for this time out were:
- Take some pictures towards the north, where there should be some interesting things to see.
- Capture some Fall colors.
- If there was time, also take some pictures towards the south / southeast, which I hadn’t done the first time.
The weather forecast indicated that the winds would be best in the morning, so that’s when I headed over. When I got there, I went to the same softball field as previous time and set up the Barn Door kite. The Mini Dopero probably would have worked too, but I wanted to use the new one. The wind was gentle-to-moderate, so in the upper part of the Barn Door’s range. In this wind, the big kite was easy to get in the air. After flying for several minutes to be sure that the kite was trimmed and flying steadily, I attached the KAP rig and started the CHDK script to take pictures.
Overall, it was a pretty good flight. There were a couple times where thermals appeared, and the kite went to a very high line angle, but there were no loops or dives. The most nervous part of the flight was when the wind became stronger for several minutes, the kite flexed and billowed, and the drag pulled it down to a very low line angle (maybe 20 degrees). A few hundred feet of line were out at this point, and I had to keep walking around to keep the long outstretched line away from trees, stadium lights, and the back fence of the softball field. Thankfully, eventually the wind relented and the kite climbed high again. The people in the spin class in between the softball fields must have gotten a good look at it while it was low! I hope it wasn’t too distracting…
Eventually, I got all of the line out and got some very nice pictures to the north, one of which I currently have as the cover photo of this website! There were some Fall colors, but really they just don’t get as brilliant here as they do in other places, even a couple hours to the north. Oh well. With the year dragging on towards winter, the sun was fairly low in the sky and cast long shadows on the ground below. With the camera high in the air, Lexington Park, California, the Patuxent River, and the Gov. Thomas Johnson Bridge were all visible, making for a very nice representative view of Southern Maryland. You can see some of those pictures up near the top of the page.
After bringing the kite down, I had a little time for another flight to take pictures in the other direction. The sun was in that direction, so I wasn’t expecting great quality, but some of them did come out decently. Due to time, I didn’t fly as high. One of the better ones from that short flight is posted above. You can see all my aerial photos from this park in the Chancellors Run Park Aerial Photo gallery.
Southern Maryland Kite Aerial Photography 