Microlighters

Lately I've been trying to take some panoramic images while flying. Apart from the obvious challenges of flying and photographing at the same time, the issue with a panoramic image is that the scene changes constantly as the aircraft moves so you have to be quick otherwise stitching the photos together becomes impossible. This past weekend featured absolutely perfect flying weather and I thought I'd try a panoramic of Cape Town's most popular viewpoint, Table Mountain from Bloubergstrand, only this time a little more elevated than the norm...



The original size final image is nearly 300mb and comprises 15 separate images but the detail is insane! Yet another reason to love my gyro, the perfect photo platform...

Regards
Jean.

Amazing picture Jean!
Do you think Learjet can print it nice and big for our new hangar?

Beautiful

very nice pic

Awesome !

Excellent photo

I would not have expected anything less from a Bishops boytjie. Pity that RBHS never producer this caliber photographers you go Jean ... Big time!!

Jean

Next time try it with this 360 degree camera attachment please...

http://www.0-360.com/index.asp?ID=googl ... pAodexfw8g

The following photo's are not gyro related, but Airbus A340 related. (I've eventually finished my A340 conversion. although I'm under training for my first 16 sectors and have done my first trip to London, and at present I'm in Hong Kong). The other day Cape Town approach kept us very high during the descent, so I asked them if we could route overhead the field for a left hand circuit onto Rwy 01. Stunning views of Table Mountain and of Cape Point from 14 000ft.

Some more photo's.

Jean, a quick question. How do I get my photo's to be as large as yours on the screen? My photo's are larger in pixels across (1280 compared to your 1116), and yet come up smaller on the forum. I even edjusted one of my photo's from 180 dpi to 72 dpi to match yours, and it still comes out small on the screen (unless you click on it to open it up).

Glen the answer is that you have posted your photos as attachments (i.e. they are physically hosted on the Microlighter's server) and the constraints for photos presented in this way are pretty limiting. The total size limitation is 100kb if I remember correctly and as you have pointed out they look small. To get around this I hosted my pics on another server (Flickr) and then linked them to my post using the BBCode. This way they can be displayed at full resolution (or whichever resolution you deem to be appropriate) without killing the Microlighter's server.

PS. Lekka pics, I have not seen the water so discoloured before.

Regards
Jean.

Baie mooi

Thought I'd try my hand at posting photo's using the Flickr trick Jean mentioned.

Went for a stunning flight around Table Mountain yesterday. It was one of those almost breathless days. It was one of those days that you almost feel like flying all day!

Fish Hoek. Couple of Great White sharks lurking around as usual.

Simon's Town in the distance

Beautiful colours of the sea at Long Beach, approaching Chapman's Peak

















Ysterplaat unmanned during the weekends.

Gave Cape Town International tower a low fly past and wave on the way back to Stellenbosch

Hey Glen

Really nice images! Looks like you got the Flickr thing sorted. I have to admit that I get scared just looking at them, you are a bit of an astronaut!!! What was your altitude for the pic looking at Chappies where you can see False Bay on the other side? If you look at the pic of Long Beach, Noordhoek, you can see a large shadow in the water offshore from the middle of the beach. This was a huge ball of sardines which got trapped in the area and was being devoured by thousands of hungry seals. Learjet and I also had a stunning peninsula flip yesterday (Blouberg to Strand, coastwise the whole way including Cape Point) and I saw the sardines everywhere. There are more in your pic of Hout Bay (the black shadow in the water along the length of the beach). Today I went there by boat and spent a few hours in the water photographing the seals glut themselves on the sards. Congrats again on some really great pics (love the one of Fish Hoek Bay).

Jean.

P.S. Have a thought about putting your name on the images. You have loaded them onto Flickr at a decent resolution and they WILL be copied and used by all and sundry...

Thanks Jean. The photo's probably looker higher than what I was at. Above Chapman's I was at 3 500ft, and at Table Mountain 4 000ft. At Chapman's, where there is nowhere to go if the donkey quits, I've worked on a pessimistic glide ratio of 1:4, which would mean you would need a minimum altitude of 2 500ft to be able to make either Long Beach or the beach at Hout Bay. Always good to have a plan B.

It's taken me some time to get used to those heights. Something I've learnt in the Cape is that it seems safer to get up high, especially in a South Easter, where the wind normally drops off to almost zero above 4000ft.

Interesting about the sardines. Didn't know that.

PS: I'm asking to be spoon fed here. Do you do that water marking on the photo's in Flickr, or do you have to use Photoshop for that?