Everglades Challenge Friday Pre-start Lineup

The plan was to practice with kite cam on Friday to be ready to capture the race start early Saturday.  I set up a radio controlled pan and tilt rig for the kite cam GoPro with a live video feed down to a monitor on the beach.  This is gear I use on my FPV model airplanes and it worked well on the kite.  Winds were forecast to be from the north at near 20kn strength.  A bit much but the direction was perfect for flying the kite without risk of tangling with the masts on the beach. 

I have become convinced that the weather is always bad or at the very least uncooperative for the EC. For the last 3 years a very strong cold front has coincided with the race.  This year was no different.  To demonstrate how contrary the weather really is the wind died completely for the start of the race.  No wind, no kite flying so we did not get the start on video.  It was blowing 15-20 twenty minutes after the start.

This video was taken on Friday afternoon when all competitors were preparing for the dawn start the next day.  The winds were a bit turbulent coming off the trees so the video is real shaky but YouTube's stabilizer function makes it watchable.



  Some still captures from the video.