Sunday, October 21, 2007
The Magic of Wat Chai Watthanaram
The next afternoon we arrived with our Tuc-Tuc, cameras, transmitter case and heli in a special carrier bag; the latter one works great, by the way. We walked up to the booth to buy our entry tickets – and it's all big eyes! "Gaa-gaa-waa-aaa-agaahaa?!" – "It's the toy model helicopter, we talked about it yesterday, all is fine!" – "Waa-aagaa-na-aahaag!" You don't have to speak Thai to realize something is just about to go terribly wrong. Our Tuc-Tuc driver happened to at least understand basic English, and after lengthy discussions we found out that the heli was NOT the problem – but the transmitter! In such cases where communication is a pain it's very important to stay extra calm and to be exceptionally friendly; else the discussion will heat up, because the employees only want to do their job, and it's equally hard for them to cope with the situation.
Okay, nobody there had ever seen a somewhat advanced transmitter before, and it looked frightening to them. So we played the mime game to show them how the flying would work. After a while, the ice was broken, and we were allowed to take both the heli and transmitter onto this ancient site.
STOP! STOOOP!!! Stop? What's now again?
This time they were pointing at our tripod and camera equipment. It was not allowed! Heli, yes. Cameras, no. Hell, things had looked so simple this time, and now it was all problems and we had to go through that lengthy discussion again. We understood that next door was the king's summer residence or something, and they were very concerned about paparazzi. To resolve the problem, we were offered to buy a disposable Fujifilm camera (the kind you use once and then give away as a whole for developing the film) – it happened to be available at the booth for two dollars. Hmm, after a quick glance at our several thousand dollar camera and photo equipment, we decided the little single-use camera was not exactly what would help us. :-)
We finally did manage to get clearance and walked to the designated flying area we'd chosen the day before. Before attracting a crowd by flying, we decided to shoot another AFD panorama. The view is simply breathtaking! You will love flying there in your computer simulator! We'd like to describe things in more detail, but this is something you simply have to experience – words are not enough.
After fetching our bags and the heli (you need to hide them behind trees/objects so they're not visible in the AFD shots, but in a way nobody can steal them), it was time for take-off. The shadows of the trees behind had come pretty close to the temple by now; that's something you don't want, because if the heli is first lit and then flies into the dark section, this gives a bad contrast – a general problem of filming, no matter what equipment you use. That's why in film productions artificial lighting is so important! The only way for us to deal with the situation was to move a little closer to the structure and to use a special wide angle lens on the camera.
The flying itself started smoothly – I felt the machine was lacking power, but then, it was really hot, and as we know from Egypt, electric models have some problems with that, too. So we continued and tried to create a scene where the heli first dives down out of the sky, the camera picture following closely. When it comes through the towers, the picture suddenly opens and – woooaah! – the full size of the monument becomes apparent. This leaves you breathless! The heli continues down towards the camera, after a short pause the picture follows and zooms in just a little bit. Then a quarter flip to the left, and up it goes in a cone. The camera follows at first, but stops when the machine has reached the outer left position, and the picture then fully reopens. The viewer is left with a fantastic full shot of the scenery while the heli spirals out of the picture into the sky.
For all the R/C pilots among you it will be clear that flying such a sequence over a terrain with obstacles is not the simplest thing. If, in addition, you have to get a good film shot, then one battery pack is damn short!
Having said this, the Hacker (Flight Power) 12s 4900 mAh pack we were using seemed to be flat after just five minutes of moderate 3D; when really pushing it, 4 - 5 min. is okay, but in this case, 7 - 8 min. should have been no problem. All of a sudden, the heli lost head speed, so quite obviously there was a problem. I switched to throttle hold and brought it down in an autorotation. We took off the canopy to have a look, and – uuhh! – everything was incredibly hot, especially the battery pack. I pulled it out and immediately saw that the six cells in the back were ballooned! Okay, put it in a safe place so it won't damage anything if it goes off! We imagined what would have happened if it had caught fire in flight, and if we had crashed into this world cultural heritage site or the king's summer palace next door …
Having said this, the Hacker (Flight Power) 12s 4900 mAh pack we were using seemed to be flat after just five minutes of moderate 3D; when really pushing it, 4 - 5 min. is okay, but in this case, 7 - 8 min. should have been no problem. All of a sudden, the heli lost head speed, so quite obviously there was a problem. I switched to throttle hold and brought it down in an autorotation. We took off the canopy to have a look, and – uuhh! – everything was incredibly hot, especially the battery pack. I pulled it out and immediately saw that the six cells in the back were ballooned! Okay, put it in a safe place so it won't damage anything if it goes off! We imagined what would have happened if it had caught fire in flight, and if we had crashed into this world cultural heritage site or the king's summer palace next door …
Anyway, we kept the simile and put in the second pack to take some cool photos. No problems this time, so right after the landing we packed together and left for the hotel. The whole action had taken about two hours; it's insane how much different things there are to do besides the flying as such.
Back in the hotel we informed our home base around Nicolas Kaiser, Lukas Grunauer and Samual Hänger about the battery problem. Next we talked to our friend Ken Yap in Singapore (the next but one stop) if he was willing to accept an international express shipment for us; no problem, and we forwarded the address to Nicolas Kaiser. You sometimes get the impression this man acts faster than his own shadow – less than 30 minutes later he informed us by SMS that the spare pack was already on its way to Ken Yap in Singapore. Thanks a lot – and well done!
Okay, that's it for Thailand.
+++ mission completed. end of transmission. +++
Labels: Ayutthaya, battery pack problem, Thailand, Wat Chai Watthanaram
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Coming to Ayutthaya/THAILAND
We had a cool flight with Thai Air – during the take-off in Nepal, some beverage cans came rolling along the aisle, plus the front video screen came down on all of us sitting in the first row. We prayed that the rest of the airplane was in better condition and that we'd make it to Bangkok safely. :-)
The new Bangkok airport is built exactly how you imagine a futuristic architectural building style – almost artificial. The immigration was not much of a problem, and after leaving the arrival hall and getting rid of all the guys offering taxi rides at unrealistic prices, we found a good one to take us to Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya? What's this?!
Ayutthaya has a lot more tradition than Bangkok since it was the capital for over 400 years. So if you are looking for great historical sites, this is the place to go.
The countryside in this area reminds you of Florida/USA in some ways. The climate was hot and humid, and there is lots of swampland. Many of the houses are built on stilts, and there is lots of water and many canals. Unlike Florida, the water level varies from year to year.
The people themselves are friendly, the language is funny and very different from what we'd heard before. It's hard to articulate for speakers of Western languages, there is not much melody in it, and it all sounds like "waa-gaa-goo-chiiaa-gaa-gaack"; one cannot help but it reminds of hens picking corn out of the dirt in the backyard. So it is no wonder that for Thai speakers it is equally hard to articulate the sounds needed for proper English. Just like in China, only very few people speak English at all, and to a) realize that they now communicate in English and b) understand what exactly they are saying, some fantasy is needed.
Incidentally, Saskia was addressed by an elderly woman; quite obviously she really wanted to tell her something. It took several minutes, and it was all pointing and gesturing until the lady had successfully communicated her concern: She was an English teacher in Thailand! :-)
We rented one of the famous Tuc-Tucs (see picture), basically a trike with open trunk and modified for transportation of people; in Europe they'd sue you for driving around with this and lock you away forever. :-) We'd marked the most famous temples in a map and shown it to the driver. The aim was to screen all the locations for WSF appeal and the possibility of R/C flying. The driver was a nice lady, and after a while she somehow accepted that we were probably the strangest tourists she'd ever seen. "Yah, yah, please go to the next temple!" – "Waah-gaa-gaa-wachkaaah!" – "Yes, whatever it is, please go there, thank you!" Then jump out of the car, walk around for five to ten minutes only, hop on again, and off it goes to the next one.
Because of this swampland character, there are lots of mosquitoes in some places – not nice, you never know if and which diseases they communicate. The last site we visited was quite an impressive structure – a white pyramid-like building, but surrounded by lots of trees. We thought it would be nice to climb up the stairs to the top so we had a good view over the city. – BAD idea, since there were some wild dogs, and they made very clear it was their territory, and that it had already been closed for today.
The site we liked best was the so-called "Wat Chai Watthanaram". Some other people also thought it was nice, and that's why it has been declared world cultural heritage by the UNESCO. So no flying here!?
We found the chief security officer, and by chance there also was a German-language guide that day. We explained the WSF project, and after some discussion they all agreed this was the greatest project they'd ever heard of, and that the flights would be ok the next day. Very nice, things usually don't fall into place that easily.
Unfortunately, appearances are deceptive …
Labels: Ayutthaya, Thailand, UNESCO world heritage
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