Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The world-famous Sydney Opera House
Sydney has the strangest weather we've ever seen. First it is stormy (only people from New Zealand would still classify this as a firm breeze) and pours like hell, some 30 minutes later it is moderately windy and only slightly overcast, another 30 minutes later it is the Deluge again. Now what does this tell us? Quite simply put, the long time of the British Commonwealth Empire has left its traces … ;-)
All kidding aside, this kind of weather thwarts all your plans. Partly helped by our sat navi (see last post!) we just drove out to the waterfront opposite the famous Sydney Opera House. It's quite a distance, still the monument is not a speck on the horizon. We arrived perfectly in time for a rain break, and since there was a lonely security guy nearby we thought it was best to start off with an AFD panorama. It may give the fixed wing guys a hard time, but it's simply great for helicopters! :-)
We had just completed the photographs and not even measured all the distances to obstacles and waypoints when the next rain front came in (BTW, in ROTOR 12/2007 we'll explain in detail how the AFD shooting works and what is needed to generate a photorealistic simulator scenery). It was so fast we didn't really know what had hit us …
About 40 minutes later we dared to get out of the car again. The good thing about the situation was that virtually everybody (including the lonely security guy) had run away because of the heavy rainfall. As we learned today there is actually LOTS of security all over the place and especially around the harbour bridge; Sydney is quite afraid of terrorist strikes and the security guys aren't the funny type. So we were pretty lucky we got away with a quick flight!
The result is absolutely cool! Apart from the wind and that flying over water is never truly relaxing there are two more things which spoil the game a little: First, the next rain front was already forming on the horizon, and second we could only fly 4 - 5 min. because of our already slightly ballooned last 4900 mAh battery pack. And finally, it is a matter of time until you have the usual annoying water drops on the lens. But anyway, the shots are good, we couldn't have done them better under these conditions, and this is what counts!
When we came back to our "hotel" it was all dark – power failure! No electricity, no light, no internet, no nothing! It took about 4 hours until at least the lights worked again, and charging the batteries meant I had to sit in the corridor (no sockets in the room!) until 4 AM in the morning. :-(
Not so nice since today we had to get up at 7 AM in order to collect Andrew Palmer at the airport. He's a true friend and came all the way from New Zealand just to meet us for one day. And it was one hell of a day! In fact, we had such a great time that it's worth writing an extra post about it; you will be more than thrilled to hear what's going on in this part of the world! :-)
Another very good news is that Rainer Hacker (did we mention he really is a great guy?!) contacted Nicolas Kaiser: There is three brand new 4900 mAh Flight Power battery packs on the way to our home base in Switzerland! That's perfect timing, thank you very much! Consequently, the two 3700 mAh packs which had been sent via the UK and had not made it to New Zealand in time have been routed back by Nicolas.
BTW, we have learned that the pressure in the passenger section of an airplane is the same as in the cargo bay. Thus it does not make a difference whether you transport the batteries in your carry-on or in your checked in baggage (you cannot have it in the hand luggage anyway). The reason for the observed ballooning must therefore be another one. We checked our chargers, but everything fine here as well. It remains a mystery …
OK, this was the end of a long but successful day. The next post will feature the most incredible story how we managed to shoot a sequel to our most successful "dequeering" video from 2005 (the official title is "HeliGraphix Helps!") even though neither Andrew nor we had brought along a helicopter for doing this! :-))
Labels: Australia, Flight Power problem, Opera House, power outage, Rainer Hacker, Sydney
# posted by hg/tuw @ 13:39 
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