Aerobee flights in BC

Mathew flew a tiny Mobius ActionCam (black) on this Aerobee Rig with no camera tray and no camera protection. The red leg brackets don't have tubing attached so are serving no function.

A nice report of the flight of an Aerobee Rig surfaced this week. Mathew flew a delta kite in British Columbia and attached a tiny Mobius ActionCam to the Aerobee Rig. He used the JerkPan feature to rotate the rig in flight and pan the camera. The Mobius was angled so it was taking oblique photos in portrait mode (vertical).

Mathew used Microsoft ICE to stitch some of the photos into panoramas which look really good.

As successful as this flight was, it ended when the entire Aerobee Rig fell off the kite line and hit the ground. The lightweight rig landed in a bush and neither the camera or rig was damaged at all. The kite line apparently unwound itself from the pendulum's attachment wire while Mathew was jerking the line to operate the JerkPan mechanism.

There is some discussion of how to prevent this in Mathew's post at Public Lab. When using a very light rig (no camera tray, no protective tubing, tiny camera), and operating the JerkPan escapement, the kite line has to be secured a little more carefully than usual.

This is a really helpful report, and includes some other panoramas from the flight. Let us know if you get your Aerobee Rig in the air (even if it doesn't stay there as long as you had intended).

This panorama is stitched from about a dozen oblique photos taken by the Mobius on an Aerobee Rig. The JerkPan was used to pan the camera. Click to embiggen.