Some of you may know of the daft "message in a bottle" project, back in 2004, when Artist Layla Curtis dropped bottles into the sea off Ramsgate, on my birthday, in the hope that they might reach the other side of the World. Some were GPS bottles and we tracked them across the channel to France and Holland. On the right you see one of our GPS bottle prototypes - but we never completed the autopilot in time for the launch :-)

GPS and Pocket PC takes a flight ...

well - I guess it had to happen sooner or later... Robin being daft enough to test his software in the air over Chobham Common, rather than the usual monitoring of where he and June were on one of their cheap holiday flights to Italy.

On 24th May 2007, after adding altitude handling to the Pocket PC version of his GPS Software, he decided to take the risk and fly it on one of his electric gliders - normally used for air photography. No "rocket science" here - just his trusty old Garmin yellow etrex, the iPAQ running GPSSppc, all stuck onto the top of the 'plane with.... yes - duck tape - what else ? :-)

Amazingly the "bog standard" Multiplex EasyGlider, with no special motor, pulled up the 3/4 Lb of payload without too much trouble. Straight after landing, we were using GPSSppc to play back the recorded flight on the same iPAQ, seeing where the 'plane went on a google earth aerial photo added to the iPAQ GPS Software before he left home. The instrument panel showed things like ground speed in mph, altitude in feet above sea level (the launch site seemed to be about 190 ft), and distance in yards from where we stood.

Don't know if we will do it again. Has anyone got a neat solution for driving one or two servos from something like the serial output from the iPAQ ? ;-)

Footnote in July 2010: our iPAQs, driving servos, are now in robot boats. On the right is a 3D plot from google earth, of data recorded by an I-gotU GPS logger.

video and still photographs from the air ...

Most of our recent aerial filming has been done by Snoopy flying "EasyStar" a lightweight polystyrene kit powered by a quiet electric motor. This model flys well in all conditions, including stong winds, and has even used floats to take off water. Robin's favorite trick is to both launch AND land in his hand :-) Here on the left you see Snoopy, gritting his teeth before yet another mission, behind the TV camera in its forward position. On the right is a picture taken by Ron Perkins, of Snoopy being followed closely - the TV camera needed to point up more ! In 2004 Snoopy filmed lots of places and our hope in 2005 is to get some good air-to-air video of Red Kites

If you want to see video of Chobham Common and EasyStars from the air, click here (4.5 MB).
If you want to see Grumpy Old Men "behaving badly" with rockets, checkout the one minute of excitement here (2 MB).

"Puppycam" is the latest radio-controlled project to provide Robin and his "grumpy old friends" some amusement occasionally. The little white fluffy dog can run around on grass and can raise it's back leg to squirt a jet of water three metres. The dog seen here on the right tore off puppycam's head and gave him a good shaking. The puppy video is here (17 MB).

Yes, they eventually made it: the first trans-Atlantic crossing by a GPS-controlled model aircraft. For details, please visit tam.plannet21.com. The model, launched from Newfoundland, arrived in Ireland on Monday 11th August 2003. This was after three models were lost in earlier attempts this year - although one got 25% across ! The aircraft were tracked by satellite communications - so they knew exactly where each was, and - nearer the ETA - when and where it should appear on the horizon. There on the left are some of the team in the USA, earlier this year, and on the right, the proud team posing in Ireland just after safe arrival. Barrett 'Joe' Foster first told Robin of this project in 1998, but it's taken over 4 years to reach fruition. Well Done Lads ! :-)

I originally set this page up to cover the amazing attempt to cross the Atlantic with GPS-controlled model aircraft. This re-awakened my interest in an old hobby - use of radio controlled model aircraft to take aerial photos. Thanks to Jan-Freerk Janssen and Holge Buge of www.Cam4Spy.de based in Wendelstein, Germany, I got into flying small video cameras. They sent me one of their miniture colour TV cameras with microphone, radio link transmitter and receiver - see picture on the right. You can see the camera-transmitter in the tube slung under the wing of my electric powered glider. The receiver is in the foreground. This plugs into a camcorder which can switch between it's own camera and the picture and sound from the receiver. Our first flights were from Charter's School, during the kids half-term, and with the kind permission of the Head Mistress.

Unfortunately, despite many requests by me, I've been unable to buy additional hardware from Jan-Freek and Holger, but have found good solutions from Maplins and direct from China - so now we have quite a collection of small TV cameras and receivers. The 1.2 GHz systems from China tend to be cheaper and smaller. We've had excellent results with the Maplin systems, including the £35 2.4 GHz receiver and similarly priced transmitter. Believe it or not, our latest hobby activity involves use of radio controlled ducks with miniture chinese cameras in their heads. Our first attempt is on the left - but we had to add ducklings to stop it capsizing at speed. Mk2 on the right was built with more care and is now our first choice: great for filming other water-birds - or Joe Public on the bank throwing bread at it :-)

It was the emails from Joe Foster that re-awakened my interest in model flying - to the extent of blowing lots of dust off my old electric glider, used to take aerial pictures some ten or fifteen years earlier on the Sunninghill page. The 2000maH 8-cell pack hauled up the 3.5 lb model plus 0.5 lb of my wife June's digital camera with no problem - evidence here. On the right is the "Tank Hill" flying site popular with Chobham Model Flyers - you may be able to just make out me and two other guys to the right of the bushes.

Here on the left is a picture taken the day before, from another part of Chobham Common. That's me in the middle, casting a shadow onto the path, with the Monument towards the top right. The seat between me, and the monument, is from where the picture above was taken - by a friendly 81 year old local dog walker - who shares the love of model flight. Look at the height of those gorse bushes on the left - not an easy launch site ! :-) If anyone is interested in doing some GPS-controlled model aircraft work or aerial movie photography, please contact me via the CONTACT page.