08-25-10 – The Book of Armaments

I can see it now…. “So I got bored one day and tied my camera to a kite string…..” “So I got bored one day and stuffed my camera into a carboard tube filled with half a pound of potassium nitrate….” “So I got bored one day and bolted my camera to a shotgun…” “So I got bored one day and put the wrong film in the wrong camera…” “So I got bored one day and cut up a soda can…” etc, etc.

See, I’d like to hear a bit of the story behind some of those kind of shots. Surely your first one didn’t turn out and you had to make revisions. What worked/didn’t? How did your end result differ from your original vision?

If nothing else, my first question on some shots is “what were you on and where can I get some?” that allowed you to come up with that idea! 😆

I see your point 😀

Is it Orionid‘s natural fashion sense that the cables match the shirt, or did Kestrana help with the coordination?

The world will never know.

Depends what part of the world.

Perhaps only my little corner of it. 😯

What? You never heard of Pearl Harbor?

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that back in the day, nobody there was wearing spandex. However, fatigues and flower prints were probably seen fairly often. Damned if I can find any pictures to confirm that (other than the semi-recent movie, of which I give zero credence.)

I call it a fashion match, based upon historical (though unverified) precedence.

orionid, I think I remember you mentioning Nuts & Volts magazine at some point. If I remember correctly and you read/know of it, do you read the near-space column? It’s a guy that uses weather balloons to loft experiment/measuring/photographic packages up to about 110K feet. He gets some pretty cool images where you can see the curvature of the earth.

I haven’t actually seen that magazine since I was six. My dad used to get it, but I was banned from it when I tried following the directions in an article about building a home-made plasma ball and caught the carpet on fire. I was simultaneously banned from MacGyver and Mr. Wizard.

I have seen some pretty creative high altitude shots, though. My google-fu has failed to find the original links I saw, but I did just uncover a variety of people who have repeated the weather-balloon camera projects on cheaper and cheaper budgets, to as low as $150. The first couple I saw were in the $750-1500 range. Hmmm….. Winter project, perhaps?

There are radio transmitters you can get to track payloads even in the small rockets that we fly but they cost $. Same with the altimeter. Although you would at some point you do lose enough rockets to equal the cost of the transmitter, the one with the camera in it that was lost recently came down in the neighbor’s pond if I remember correctly, and so would probably have been toast even if it was recovered.

Well, I was thinking more about the one he lost to the kite. You’re right, I don’t think any tracker is going to help if your payload deposits itself in your neighbor’s pond!

This website, http://www.byonics.com, is where the near space guy got his tracking device. They have kits for $33 or $98 with GPS. I’m not sure what equipment you need to receive the signal, though, so that would also be another added cost.