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KAPiCA/03 took place from the 15. to the 19. of October 2003 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pazific Groove, CA. As last year ‘the captain’ Brooks Leffler and his team were the organizers again. The German KAPers were presented at KAPiCA by Ralf Beutnagel, Wolfgang Bieck and Ulrich Monsees (alphabetic). Now I want to show you some of my KAP results. Please enjoy it.
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Wolfgang Bieck, Ulrich Monsees and me arrieved on the weekend befor KAPiCA. We stayed in a motel in Redwood City and made some daily trips. We visited for example San Francisco and the redwood trees at Muir Woods NG in the north of SF. Our first kiteflight was at the Windy Hill Open Space Reserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Ulli has flown his ultra light silver Delta in a breeze of wind. We drove State Highway 1 south along the coastline. Looking out for lighthouses we stopped at Point Montara and were somewhat disappointed about all the fences around. But the following coastline to Half Moon Bay was spectacular. On wednesday we startet early in the morning from Redwood City to Pazific Groove. We stopped at Pigeon Point Lighthouse for our first KAP-flight.
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Pigeon Point Lighthouse
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Wednesday, 15. October: We reached Pigeon Point Lighthouse early on the day. I launched my Multi Flare in a very stable wind. At first I lifted my digital rig and shot pictures with videocontrol. Than I lifted Wolfgang Bieck’s SLR-rig and in a third time his Coolpix-rig for “bubble-pictures”. An absoluty perfect KAP-flight, could it work allways this way! Sending Wolfgang’s image file by e-mail to the Netherlands, Peter Bults did the “bubble-work” on the computer and presented the result the same day on his
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Thursday, 16. October: For the KAP-excursion our group decided to drive south to visit Big Sur, Bixby Bridge and Point Sur Lighthouse. But there was no place to launch a kite at Point Sur Lighthouse during the week. The only private street to the lighthouse goes during meadows with cows on and the roadgate is looked with about 30 (!!!) padlocks. At Bixby Bridge we looked for a place to launche a kite. But we didn’t do: too many electric cable in the air, a wind streaming downsite (!) the hill and arising coastel fog stopped us.
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Friday, 17. October: We dicided to stay this time at Pazific Grove Beach. Wolfgang had built a new Sanjo Rokkaku without adjust the bridle. But during the day it was absolut calm. Only Ullis Delta was sailing a few minutes on the not real existing wind. Sitting on the beach in front of the Point Pinos Lighthouse we could see a sea-lion. In the afternoon the windspeed increased a little bit and I could launch my Multi Flare. I lifted Wolfgang Bieck’s rig at first in sunny conditions. But just when I setted up my own rig into the air the costal fog cames with the wind to the beach. But I didn’t stop doing KAP: I took some picturs from a cypress tree growing between iceplants on a golf course. I used the zoom function on my rig to get different distances to the tree. I and the other kiters who touched me we got all a very precarious feeling: my kite line was wet and send the atmosphaeric electricity down. I ‘grounded’ the kite and get it down fast!
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Point Pinos Lighthouse Beach
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The cypress tree in fog. The small waterdrops worked as a natural filter. The far away grass from the golf course get unsharp and milky. The natural bright color of the red parts from the iceplants are looked like toned down. The whole picture get a touch like painted. To get mostly fascinated by this picture you have to see it in a real big size, for example at the
All spectators get suddenly quite impressed by this photo as it was shown at the KAPiCA-show. And it was the last pic in the show: I got the Award “Best KAPiCA Photo”. What a great feeling for me. |
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Lovers Point
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Saturday, 18. October: Several cars with KAPers drive north to Salinas, Moss Landing and Santa Cruz. Together with Shusuke Minato we drove directly to Santa Cruz lighthouse. There was a little bit of wind just enough to launch my Multi Flare and to get the lighthouse from different perspectives. After I had finished my KAP-session I lifted Wolfgang’s rig too. Ulli tried his silver delta and his lightweight rig. Than the windspeed dropped and we couldn’t get a bubble-pic as we took at Pigeon Point Lighthouse. We put our KAP-equipment in the cars. On our way home we stopped short at the second lighthouse in Santa Cruz. But no other KAP-group was at the Santa Cruz West Breakwater Light which is also known as Walton Light. The roller coaster would be a good occasion for KAP too, but: there was no wind. Some of the other groups stopped their excursions too because of no wind and some other technical problems. Back at Pacific Groove again there was a little bit more wind and all over the beach FlowForms and Doperos were flying.
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Santa Cruz Lighthouse
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I used my zoom-function on my digital rig at Santa Cruz. The coastline pictures on the left is made with the wide-angle, the one on the right with a tele. And the lighthouse above the coastline pic on the right is made with a tele too. So again: KAPing with a tele focal distance is possible.
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Sunday, 19. October: On the cleaning-up-the-rooms day we didn’ t have realy much time for doing an KAP-excursion. But between lunch and a Monterey Airfield flight Scott Haefner and I tried to get some AP at Salinas River Bay. We needed a lot of time to launche our kites in the low wind. Because my equipment was made “car&travelable” I didn’t have enough time to set up my rig. So I was at same place as last year and again without AP.
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After KAPiCA Wolfgang, Ulli and I made a holliday tour through the California national parks. We visted Kings Canyon & Sequoia NP, Mojave NR, Death Valley NP, Mono Lake and Yosemite NP. But only at Mojave NR we were doing KAP again to get some Yoshua-trees. Wolfgang used his new Sanjo Rokkaku as a lifter kite for his rig. My rig didn’t work because of frequenzy problems in the air.
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And here you can visit Wolfgang’s and Ulli’s homepage:
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new at gmx |
old at t-online |
