Built to Boogie

I couldn't resist her. She's a beauty in stainless steel, a simple and elegant combination of form and function. She's a Peter Lynn ST kite buggy that I bought secondhand from a lad in Stamford who's upgrading to something more seriously acrobatic. I hadn't realised there was such a huge but largely invisible kite buggy-ing fraternity in this part of the world. (Perhaps that's the way they like it.) I thought I would struggle to find a buggy, but via the online power-kiting forum, Kitecrowd, I found a found a community of buggiers only too happy to help each other out. I should have realised that Lincolnshire, with its old airfields and endless East Coast beaches, was built for buggies.

Days and Moments to Remember

Florence and Mum, February 2007

Today has a particular significance as it would have been Mum's 93rd birthday. The poignancy of the date was brought home an hour or so ago, when I had a telephone call from an 83-year old acquaintance of hers, calling to wish her a happy birthday. How much I wished I could have brought her to the phone, but she now only speaks to me in the dead hours of night.

View from my Window, Lincoln College

Time seems in very short supply now that I have returned to work. I'm grateful that my three fairly arduous days a week in Stamford are ameliorated a little by a fourth day day in the congenial surroundings of Lincoln's Cathedral Quarter, working in the top floor studio and darkroom of the old School of Art. In my own student days, the studio was the base room for an architectural technicians' course, run by Edward Albarn, a grand old architect who taught us unruly painters the more refined skills of perspective. He once lost a bet to me when, while drawing a two-point perspective drawing of a church with tower as a class exercise, I thought I could see how you would plot and project the conical spire and its details. He bet me a substantial sum of money that I couldn't do it without being shown, but I could see that the solution was fairly logical and was very embarrassed to prove him wrong. I hate to be made to look like a smart-arse, then as well as now, and refused to claim my winnings though they were offered. They were funny old times and the building still remains chock-full of so many happy memories.

Kite Aerial Photography: An Experiment

Looking back (as you do) I'm struck by how many of my ideas started out as thumbnail sketches on the backs of envelopes. This Summer's main project was no exception ...
It represented a convergence of need and interest in a very satisfying way. The background is my wish to have a better understanding of the topographical contexts of abandoned structures and archaeological sites in the Hebridean Islands. Simple rectilinear aerial photographs could provide a useful addition to measured surveys, such as those I made on Scarp, off the West coast of Harris. Anyway, doing kite stuff is fun! I've still got fond memories of the home-made kites the kids and I used to fly off the side of Pendle Hill in our Lancashire days.

The catalyst that set the project in motion was an unplanned encounter with a kite festival at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire back in April. Beneath a rainbow-decorated sky the irresistable lure of The Highwaymen stand drew me in and resulted in me going home with spools of kite line and a very temptacious price list.

There is a seemingly infinite amount of information on kite-based photography (generally called KAP by its practitioners) on the Web, much of which is anecdotal, like this blog post.

The best-known and probably most comprehensive website on the subject is Cris Benton's KAP site. As well as this, there's an inspirational video of him on Vimeo or Make:Magazine's mind-boggling Make:television channel (Episode 2). It's a good showcase for the creative potential of KAP.

Other names crop up repeatedly when researching KAP online, such as Brooks Leffler (maker of Brooxes rigs) and James Gentles (maker of gentLED electronic triggers, etc.). The KAP Shop, in the Netherlands, seems to be the main European supplier of KAP-related bits and pieces.

Typical of other useful sites are KAP, How to do it, and KAP. There are also academic sites and papers related to the subject, such as the University of Vienna's Aerial Archive and a pdf'd conference paper on unmanned small-format aerial photography.

My own ambitions at this stage are fairly modest. To hang a camera from the sky and take pictures of any sort would count for me as an achievement.

The simplest way to take vertical shots seemed to be to pack the kit in a small box that I could hang from a kite line. I had worked out that a box about 3" deep (75mm) and 6" square (150mm) internally would hold most cameras and other components.

I considered doing away with the Picavet cross suspension system and screwing the suspension rings directly into the box itself. However, I realised that a cross would allow me to rotate the box relative to both the direction of the kite line and the main axes of objects on the ground below. To construct the box, I used basswood comb-jointed at the corners for its combination of lightness and strength. Full-size pattern drawings were made to ensure that the pieces would all fit together.

There are more pictures showing
the building of the rig on Flickr.

For the radio-control components, Phils Models in Sleaford provided everything I needed along with plenty of free advice.

At this stage in this project, to have gone out and bought a new digital camera would have been a reckless extravagance. Cousin Rex's expeditions to car-boot sales provided me with three obsolete but serviceable digital cameras (of about two-megapixel resolution) that could, if necessary, be tested to destruction.


The rig, finally finished, painted and varnished went with me on my second visit of the Summer to North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides. I'm pleased to say that in spite of the battering it took, it came back in good condition. A selection of images from my trip are in my Flickr photostream. Needless to say, there were lots of steeply-learned lessons for me to work on in time for a much more productive visit in 2010.

Hitching a Ride

Hitching a Ride
Originally uploaded by Joneau

Our week of testing kites and KAP rig over, Sol and I had fun on the ferry back to Skye by humming sea tunes (Rico's Ska version of SeaCruise being the most tuneful) and doing comparative testing of the ship's food and facilities. The observation lounge scored best all round - the Navmaster GPS screen being the clincher.

Beaten by a Man in a Bathtub

Hawaiian outrigger racing canoe technology ruled once again at the 2009 North Queensferry Raft Race, part of the annual Gala festivity. Ginger-wigged defending champion Olivier saw off once again his over-designed opposition.

First to launch, he had time to relax by sitting on a nearby inflatable while his rivals took to the water.

I had (misplaced) confidence in this three-man-power double outrigger raft. Sleek and stylish, it looked invincable.

The two-man luxury model, complete with catering facilities on the quarter-deck, was clearly hampered by its parasol on this breezy day. Out of shot, the bathtub was being bailed out following ungentlemanly action by the crew of the double outrigger.

Having deposited its crew and catering facilities in the river, the luxury raft needed some hasty modifications before the race could get underway.

Once the race started, there was no stopping the bathtub. Light and fast, it skittered out to the old jetty and back again, leaving its rivals plodding, despite their superior manpower.

PS: Thank goodness for mobile phones. Never a proper camera around when you most need it.

Crossing the Firth of Forth

Crossing the Forth Brdge, South to North
(2min 23sec)

Although I've done it numerous times, I still get a thrill each time I take a train across the Forth Bridge. It is indeed a thing of wonder and an object of functional, if brutalist, beauty. Like the Waverley Steps, it also has its place in my family history as something talked about by Dad in his pre-war adventures.

The Forth Bridge also figures in the notebook he used to record his wartime experiences as Sapper CT Pearson of the Royal Engineers. His Company were being moved to Comrie Camp in Perthshire and having boarded their troop train at 7pm on November 2nd, 1942, they travelled through the night and crossed the Firth of Forth the following morning. This is what he says:

"Outside Edinboro we crossed the Forth Bridge and quite a few men carried out the old custom of throwing coins over the Bridge into the Firth of Forth far below. I remember one party who were playing cards at the time and someone threw the whole of their 'kitty' overboard which I understood amounted to over £1. It may have brought them luck."

From Comrie, his Company boarded the ill-fated liner SS Strathallan for their journey to Algiers in North Africa.

The Forth Bridge
from North Queensferry Station

One other piece of railway-related memorabilia came to light the other day when I rediscovered Dad's old wartime wallet. In it, alongside his army pay book and various newspaper cuttings, was this photograph:

On the back of the photograph is written: "Top of Ben Nevis 4400 ft". Fort William was another place Dad had visited on a free pass in pre-war days. I wonder who his pals were? Dad himself is second from the right (with the top of his head torn off).

A Sunny Day in Edinburgh

Although my Dad (Cyril) was never a great storyteller, I do have some fragmentary childhood memories of him telling me about his trips around Britain when he was young. When he left school, he followed family tradition and joined LNER (The London and North Eastern Railway). LNER's main route joined the two great capitals, London and Edinburgh.

As a railway worker, free rail passes opened up all sorts of opportunities for travel. It's hard today to recapture the sense of adventure there was in simply moving from one place to another. Fragments of tales he told me are brought back by a variety of inconsequential things. Whenever I'm in Edinburgh and am walking out of Waverley Station, Dad is always beside me in spirit as I walk up Waverley Steps. I remember him telling me of the great winds that would almost sweep you off your feet. These winds are a matter of legend.

Even on a balmy day in June there is a noticeable breeze.

It seems that where ever you are in the city centre, there is always the sound of bagpipes in the background. Even in the tranquillity of Princes Street Gardens, the birds compete with (or are perhaps encouraged by) buskers.


Behind the Royal Scottish Academy, an historically kitted-out boy band appeared to be getting ready to strut their stuff. Desultory drum-taps and much moving of kit backwards and forwards seemed to be designed to attract a crowd. As a Man On A Mission that day I got bored and left after ten minutes waiting for them to actually play something. They reminded me, perhaps unfairly but irresistably, of Life of Brian's Popular Front of Judea. (Much posturing but little or no action.) They were probably good when they got started, but here's thirty seconds' worth of my fruitless wait:

Ye Jacobites by name
Let your schemes alone
(from Burns)