A Story from Tim Meyer-König:

"Aerial Photography with a Bee"

Inspired by Tom Crowly's homepage with great aerial pictures and very good hints to do it yourself, I started looking for a digital camera to suit my needs. I did not want to build a bigger wing and change the construction of my fuselage like Tom, so I was searching for a slender and lightweight cam. The Fuji DX-10 proved to be exactly what I needed with an acceptable price of about 200,- Euros.
The cam can take pictures with a resolution of 1024x768. Of course higher resolutions are always better, but also much more expensive. The big advantage of the DX-10 is her weight: only 300 grams. She also fits perfectly in the Bee fuselage.
A servo is mounted on her by a carbon reinforced balsa bracket.
The Fuji DX-10 with the servo mounted


It sure looks like the cam is feeling comfortable in there 		Mounting
Into a piece of foam that is cut to fit into the fuselage a hole for the cam is cut. By this she is perfectly secured in the fuselage. I am thinking of using a kind of safety-belt (just in case...), but until now everything worked great.
The cam "looks out" the starbord door, which is left open during flight. If you want to do this too, remember, that you have to be able to switch your cam on, when she is mounted. With my construction you need some very thin fingers to to it. Luckily I have them. :o)

First Results
Before getting my cam airborne I did some testflying with a dummyweight. Just as expected, my Bee had to fly faster then usual, but she was able to take off by herself and was as good controlable as usual.
This once again shows, what a great plane the Bee is. She can carry 1/3 of her takeoff-weight as payload. Even the C5 Galaxy can not carry more!
I tested the reconnaissance-Bee during my flying-holliday together with Andreas and I can tell you, I am hooked to this kind of photography. The first pictures were taken on an evening and were somewhat disappointing. It was just to dark to take pictures, so most of them were far away from beeing sharp.
During the following days we went flying at noon. If possible, Andreas tried to fly his Bee into my viewing-angle. As you can see, I sometimes was able to ad him to the pictures. This makes the pics more threedimensional.
The great thing about digital cams: checking the pics after landing.


Pictures

My first picture: sunset in southern germany together with a hot air balloon (very small thought).
The little town of Feldkirchen. Here we stayed.
The school of Feldkirchen.
The local tennis court. You can see us sitting beneath the tree in front. The crossing was our airfield - perfect!
Same picture, but now Andreas Bee is airborne. Watch the shadow!
Look at these two lazy fellows...
It was astonishing, how difficult it is to get the other plane onto the picture.
The train station of the neighbourtown Westerham.
Railroadtracks out of the air look just great.
I love this picture. Andreas Bee could bee a real plane.
Out of the sky, a freshly mown meadow suddenly looks interesting.
A gravel pit.


Tom's pics

Having sent some of my pics to Tom he mailed me his latest one's and man, they are terrific. Especially the big altidude from which they are taken makes them very special. I guess I will build a bigger wing, so my Bee can gain altidude faster.

Awesome picture of mount St Helens.
An airfield, also a great motive. Tom tries to catch real planes on his pictures but hasn't succeeded yet.
Well, what do we have here? Reality-TV? :o)


Home Logo