It worked! Saturday I went back to Kalapana and had hours of time to fly. Pity my transmitter wasn't completely charged. Nonetheless I had my kite in the air for about two hours, once around 4pm and the other near sunset. KAP worked out great!

I also did two 4x5 pictures, one at 8-seconds and the other at 1/15 second. I plan to develop film tonight, so I should be able to see how those work out. Unfortunately I couldn't find my 30x focusing loupe, so there's a reasonable chance the negatives won't be usable.

Parenthetically, I really thought I'd lost my 30x loupe. I searched everywhere, or so I thought. This came right after changing to a new camera bag for my 4x5 (my old KAP bag), so when I got home I even rooted through the trash, pulled out the old, disintegrating bag, and searched it at midnight when we got home. No dice. So I ordered a new one online. $55. OUCH! Not four hours later I reached for a yellow Wratten filter, and lo and behold I'd crammed my loupe into the wrong pocket of my photo vest... the only pocket I hadn't searched. I need to get up at 4am tomorrow to cancel my order before they ship it! Loupe restored!

The next morning I got to start really pawing through the pictures. One even supported panorama stitching, and holds enough detail to print roughly 32" x 13" without pixellation. Yaaay! It went up on my Etsy page as an un-matted print.

The flight itself was pretty funny. The folks at Kalapana remembered me from last week, so when I told them Scott gave me permission to fly, and what the conditions were, they were happy. One of the DLNR guys made sure I understood that if my kite went down past the barrier, it was gone. I assured him I understood, and would take the warning to heart.

But other than that things were incredibly smooth. The air cleaned up around 220' out with a Flowform 16, and after sun-down the air was so stable it was like having an airborne tripod.

Unfortunately I didn't do a single AuRiCo launch. I got the new chip from Peter Engels and Brooks Leffler, but like a dork I didn't print out my new reference card to go with the new firmware, so I had no idea what the switches did. I kept getting cross-talk between two of my servos, which I remember I solved last time by reading the reference tables. Ah well, my mistake for not testing my gear prior to heading out.

In any case, Kalapana was a wonderful photo outing. The folks out there were fantastic, the shots came back with enough good ones to put a smile on my face, and I even got a new one to post to Etsy. No damage to my gear, and I got my 30x loupe back. Can't beat it!

Life is good.

Tom