On The Wrong Track

David Hunt - Gray, Tennessee, USA       Dec 23, 1999

The first KAP subject that I ever attempted was a very tall train trestle that ran between two hills and across a highway. I was by myself on this outing and immediately I learned how hard it was to determine how far down range the camera rig was located. I got many “great” shots of the hay field that I was flying from. The only part of the trestle that I managed to capture on film was the base pylons. The score after a roll of film was; Bridge-24, KAP-0.

A few weeks latter on Thanksgiving Day I returned this time with my 13 year old son, Caleb, to assist. Since Caleb was too small to handle the Flowform 30 with the winds that were present that day I used him to tell me how far down range the rig was, while I flew the kite and worked the transmitter. I outlined the different positions that I wanted the rig to be in and we went over some hand signals. My son’s hand signals, in retrospect, were quite amusing. I had to call him back over to me and go over them again. Things started going more smoothly and I managed to take 6 or 7 pictures when...

Let me mention that this railway tack is very busy, every time that I have been to this location a train has come by. Let me also mention that I live in the mountainous end of Tennessee were the flow of air over a nearby ridge can make your kite behave in unusual ways.

That said, about this time a down draft coming off an adjacent hill caused my kite to loose altitude. My kite was pulling as hard as ever but was flying at an angle of no greater than 15 degrees.

The kite line was over the railroad trestle no more than 10 feet. After close to a minute of working with the kite, it finally regained altitude. I decided to move away from the trestle in case the wind shifted again. While moving away another down draft caught my kite, but this time because I had moved back my camera rig settle down right in the middle of the tracks. There was a three foot high hand rail on the side of the trestle so I couldn’t drag it off the bridge without possibly entangling it in the railing. If I hadn’t been in such a panic some good shots could have been taken. I just knew that Murphy’s law was in operation, and that any moment I was going to hear the horns of an approaching train. While the rig was on the tracks the kite was shifting directions horizontally, dragging my camera rig over the rocks and railway ties. After what seemed an hour, but was probably only 30 seconds, the kite slowly began to gain altitude, while I quickly moved my equipment out of harms way. Just as I got all my equipment packed up to leave, a train came over the trestle.

When the pictures came back I didn’t have one good shot of the trestle. The score was now; Bridge 48, KAP-0.

This story does have a happy ending. I returned to this site recently and took many good shots of the trestle. I even got two pictures directly overhead when a train was crossing. I’m not sure of the final score, but KAP wins after getting on the right track.