This Droid TV commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9hChFcEIhM kept getting played in L.A. and
became a running joke in our household. I became curious about the catchy jingle
and searched it out on YouTube where someone had the whole re-mix posted as a
B-Side single which I downloaded. I figured I'd use it in one of my hang gliding
videos and kept it in mind.
Subsequently, Ed Ewing, editor of Cross Country magazine asked me to send in my
six best pictures of Marshall Peak for this year's travel guide (free
supplement). The next day was forecast good for XC from Marshall and I wanted to
see how my recently acquired and updated, 2002 Seedwings Sensor 610 F3 152 would
perform.
I had a GoPro Hero2 on my offset keel boom and HD Hero on my right corner
bracket both set for stills. It was a very busy day and before I left the
vicinity of Marshall Peak I made sure to have the cameras aimed at interesting
subjects and then hoped for the best before I went on course. I accumulated
nearly 16,000 stills between the two cameras during the 2:49 hr, 31-mile free
triangle where I took the long, scenic route: http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/554646.
After I found a few to submit to Ed for the guide I got to thinking about making
a stroboscopic time-lapse video with some of the better sections of the flight
and timing it to that Droid jingle. Here is the result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-SX3PqHuwo
On a side-note, the Sensor not only performed extremely well on this XC flight
and has subsequently shown its capability on other flights. Bob Trampeneau has a
710 http://www.seedwings.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61&Itemid=76
in production to be ready in about three weeks. We plan to fly head-to-head and
see how my updated 610 F3 compares. I will try to get as much good video and
data as I can from this for anyone interested.
The flight was nearly
five hours long with over 44,000' of total climbing. Lots of gorgeous scenery and wispy goodness. It ends after flying right over the roller coasters of Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park (closed during off-season) near Valencia, CA. Local conditions yield this flight route only a few times per year. I had the opportunity go farther but didn't want the risk as I hit the worst crossing terrain late in the day.
Driver, Fast Eddy used my Garmin 76S which recorded his entire chase. I took his
track log and combined it with my flight tracks in SeeYou then combined that w/
bits of my flight and a fitting movie sound track to come up with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExP4mAw6Bc
