A New Sputnik Moment
When an F-22 fighter jet destroyed a Chinese high altitude balloon last week, many saw the latest high tech aircraft deflating an old-fashioned novelty. The ...
post
Solar Thermal Atmospheric Research Station (STARS) Proposals, 1978-1982
In the early 1960s, Buckminster Fuller did back-of-the-envelope calculations for a giant, solar-heated balloon that he called Cloud Nine. This 1-mile (1.6km)...
Milwaukee Harbor, Komatsu North America
My current kite aerial photography rigs and a flat winder of string, fits in a small shoulder bag and weighs a little over 2 pounds. My rig’s portability let...
Kite photos from the Frank Mots International Kite Festival, Milwaukee
At the 2022 Frank Mots International Kite Festival in Milwaukee, We flew kites and kite banners, and also captured aerial photos (this post) and ground shots...
Ground photos from the Frank Mots International Kite Festival, Milwaukee
At the 2022 Frank Mots International Kite Festival in Milwaukee, we flew kites and kite banners, and Colleen Donaldson and I (mostly Colleen) took photos of ...
sailing the sky: endless gliding takes shape
While sailing the sky is often used as a flight metaphor, sailing physics may be directly applicable to continuous flight. Can two wings, one functioning as ...
bigger kite banners
This tutorial details a fairly quick and inexpensive method for creating big banners to fly from a kite.
Airpup on Innovation Nation
Airpup was recently featured on CBS’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca.
DJI Pocket 2 for Kite Aerial Photography
I’ve recently taken three flights using the DJI Pocket 2 with WiFi dongle for aerial photography, conducting two short flights on Airpup and another brief fl...
Airpup production patterns
Final plans for the production Airpup design are now available on Github, released as open hardware under the CERN Open Hardware Licence.
Helium Supplier Map Built on uMap & OSM
With the pandemic in full swing, helium is rather expensive and has been difficult to get. I’ve therefore been keeping track of suppliers and their offerings...
Airpup production prototype: studio update
After a variety of delays, detailed in my previous studio update videos, I’ve finally finished the production prototype of Airpup and have done a solid test ...
run of flat winders & illustrated instructions
I did a production run of 30 flat winders based on my design from last spring, and also illustrated some instructions.
new video: studio updates on Airpup Construction
I’ve begun creating a series of video-based studio updates using my standard definition video mixer. They’re quick and easy to make, and let me document my p...
Putting a face to a name: the Airpup mascot
I want Airpup to be fun and social, and worked with Justin Nichol to create a character that not only represents Airpup, but could be drawn directly on the b...
Flying signs: kite banners
Over the past year I’ve been making kite banners for slogans.
Event videography with Airpup
Flying Airpup at events is fun and garners a warm response. People notice Airpup and smile, then go back to what they were doing. The curious follow Airpup’s...
Airpup repository on Github
On Github you’ll find Airpup’s repository of 2D patterns for construction as well as a corresponding 3D model.
What is a kite balloon?
Kite balloons are balloons that fly like kites, and they were the first reliable way to fly and land in the same place.
Airpup at the Lincoln City Fall Kite Festival
Airpup joined the phenomenal show of kites at the 2018 Lincoln City Fall Kite Festival. It was an opportunity to practice aerial videography, and also to fly...
Out and about with Airpup
I’ve been out flying the full-size Airpup and tweaking the rigging over the past two months. Below are some of the photos and videos I’ve been taking.
Introducing Airpup
Airpup is small for a balloon, because Airpup is a kite balloon. Airpup sips helium and eats high winds. Back Airpup on Crowd Supply.
Detroit Kite Festival
I went to the Detroit Kite Festival with Colleen Donaldson and we had a blast! The organizers pulled off a wonderful and inclusive festival complete with a h...
Detroit Kite Festival aerial photos
While at the Detroit Kite Festival I captured some aerial photos with my Canon S100 running CHDK, installed with STICK. It flew on the always-reliable KAPte...
Cully Park Kite Party report back
On June 30th I held a workshop making Sled kites at the Grand Opening of Cully Park. We made close to 80 kites in 3.5 hours. The design is the Stormy Sled, n...
Cully Park Kite Party
Join a kitemaking and flying party at the Grand Opening of Cully Park in Portland, OR on June 30th, from noon-4pm.
∞ flat line winder for kite string ∞
This kite line winder is designed for a figure eight winding technique. Winding line in a figure eight ∞ folds the line so that there is no twist. Line can ...
Danny Bowman’s Spherical Solar Balloons
Danny Bowman has just published on the array of 20’ solar hot air balloons he and Sarah Albert flew with a network of infrasound sensors. On his blog you can...
Boundary Layers Walk illustrated
The Boundary Layers walk is an outdoor education activity introducing atmospheric turbulence and stratification. The goal is to build an awareness of wind’s ...
Boundary Layers Walk at the Oregon Eclipse Festival
This past summer I created a walk featuring workshop exercises about plants and wind in the landscape for my Guerilla Science Residency. My goal was to intro...
plastic seaming instructional with a model 1916 kite balloon
The video supercut: Ballon Caquot échelle 1/7 - Caquot balloon 1:7 scale from bowman813 on Vimeo. This 1916 Caquot observation balloon was made for a...
CNES kite balloons in Guam
CNES is teaming with the National Weather Service to release tethered blimps flying 100’ above the Pacific Ocean for a month or more French press release wit...
Site relaunch in Jekyll
I’ve relaunched this blog in Jekyll, rather than Wordpress. I’ve got some fun flying stuff in the works too.
kite anemometers
Written with Ecta64. Archived 4th of March 2018 from Publiclab.org. Kite anemometers on this site, and on Github.
determining wind direction with a kite and compass
During PM hotspot monitoring, we launched a small kite to take wind direction measurements above the tree height. These measurements were usually about 10-15...
rubber band and PET bottle camera rig
The PET bottle rig has two components– the modified bottle and a rubber band harness for the inside. Small construction details differ for phones, small cam...
Enforcing Stormwater Permits Along the Mystic River with Google Street View
In 2015 the New America Foundation asked me and Shannon Dosemagen to write a chapter for their Drone Primer on the politics of mapping and surveillance. I wo...
flight report Aerobee Rig panoramas and pratfalls
Last week I got a chance to test out an old favorite of mine– flying off wind with asymmetrical tails, and added a recent acquisition– the KAPtery Aerobee Rig.
notes on assembling the Aerobie Rig
I purchased an Aerobee rig from the KAPtery because I’m real excited about the Jerk Pan mechanism. Our unpredictable late spring rains (its still spring in...
outlining needed kite tutorials
Glenn Davison has answered many of the questions below in the AKA guide to kite flying. I’ve archived the discussion for all its notes and camera-specific co...
DIY mini kite kit first flight
Background Inspired by @PatCoyle’s look at small, cheap parafoil kites for mapping, I’ve been looking for a stable, sparless kite that could lift a small cam...
Stormy O Weathers Horned Allison: towards a kite wind speed meter
see current posts about kite anemometers on headfullofair.com
off-wind kite flying: redtone rigging in Augusta, WI
Dogs are totally pro-kite. Stephanie, Tom, myself, and our entranced canine audience. All ground photos courtesy of Stevie
kite aerial photography for spectral mapping of intertidal landscapes
An article on two-camera NDVI in intertidal mapping from PLOS One, using kites, via the KAP forums.
getting a high altitude balloon back
What I want to do fly a high altitude balloon and get it back. This means tracking where it goes and calling home. I want to use GPS to track the flight, an...
Mapknitter annotations GSoC
What I want to do There is no single page to find all the work we’ve done thinking about map annotations. I want to summarize the map annotation needs of our...
three-class mapping module at Trillium Charter School
What I want to do Teach three blocks of 50 minutes each on grassroots mapping to a collection of 6-8th graders in Grace Hwang’s Art of Politics elective at T...
removing a raspberry pi camera IR filter: learn from my mistakes
What I want to do I wanted to remove the IR filter from the Raspberry Pi Camera.
scripting a Raspberry Pi to boot and shoot timelapse photos
What I want to do I wanted to setup my Raspberry Pi to automatically boot and start shooting photos, so I could use it for aerial photography. I’d previously...
IR/visible light camera dreams & parts
I’ve been trying to envision what an Visible Light/IR camera would look like as a product. the sketch above is of a weatherproof tupperware-like case with a...
inspirational delta kites
From the kite plans database–
Solar hot air balloons
Archived 4th of March 2018 from Publiclab.org. Header photo credit: Matthew Coolidge.
using kites as atmospheric wind meters
Archived 4th of March 2018 from Publiclab.org. Kite anemometers on this site, and on Github.
1st Transcontinental & 1st Trans-Atlantic Balloon Overflight- California Near Space
The DIY long-duration balloon race heats up with a record-setting trans-atlantic and trans-continental flight. Competitors ready superpressure balloons.
Mutoscope for Fernando, on the SIP Blog
My work for the Public Laboratory is partially funded by a grant from the Shpilman Institute for Photography, who’ve featured my Mutoscope on their blog. Gr...
My summer, generalizations only.
Its been so long since an update. I Spent my summer between Switzerland, studying sanitation with Cewas and Butte, Montana working on community mapping in C...
Public Laboratory wins a grant from the Knight News Challenge!
At the** Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science**, of which I’m a co-founder, we’ve just been awarded $500,000 by the Knight Foundation. Congrats ...
scientific, photographic, and person-lifting kites, 1900-1940
Baden F.S. Baden-Powell’s Manlifting Levitor. 1895. No photos or film I can find. Was it flat or bowed?
Topographic maps from fled kites
I just started building fled kites, but my fellow Grassroots Mapper Nathan Craig is already doing 3D topographic scans with them. ** He’s using **AgiSoft’s P...
Kite Fishing in Indonesia & Melanesia
Traditional Kite fishing in Indonesia, using the motion of a kite to give bait a constant motion. ** A little more history here**. I think this is the one of...
Mapping Colonialism, Talk on 4/9
This saturday I’ll be dipping in briefly to the Counter-Counter Insurgency Convergence, at Reed College. Given my current work with community mapping, I’m v...
Amateur Radio Throwdown: Planetary Circumnavigation by Balloon
Mark the date, March 24, 2011- Robert Rochte throws in his hat for circumnavigation of the globe by an autonomous balloon on the Balloon_Sked mailing list. ...
Reed Arts Week
The talk and workshop went great. I was too busy to photograph the flights, but will get photos soon. Su Liu came up with a great double-layer heat seaming ...
Help Protei! Autonomous, oil-sopping sailbots
Protei is a project I whole heartedly support. Cesar Harada has put together an incredible team, and with a little money it is going to happen.
Reed Arts Week, RAW: Geographies
I’m proud to be participating in Reed’s Art Week. I’ll be giving** a lecture and demonstration of aerospace in the arts and Grassroots Mapping tools on Satur...
Kite Balloon Development @ PLOTS
Follow the kite balloon working page over at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. There’s a lot of research in there that I’ve only now go...
kite balloon futures and histories
Major Parseval’s dirigible balloon 1906-1908
Cesar Harada’s GRM balloon kit instructions
These are the best basic balloon kit instructions, beautiful. Check out the awesome maps he got with Bonny and other grassroots mapping folks.
Speaking at Cyborg Camp Portland 10/2
I’m going to be at Portland’s Cyborg Camp talking about waste management and human senses. There’ll be some good French sanitation...
Grand Detour and Research Club on Kickstarter
Two organizations in Portland that I love! WOah, and I’m in the video. one thing- it says my balloons are in the gulf taking pictures. My balloons aren’t i...
Open Hardware Summit Notes
Met and ran into fellow grassroots mapping folks Bonny Gregory and Cesar Harada, and my old roommate Isaac Ravishankara.
kite balloon construction ideas with boston folks
Sketch of an elliptical kite balloon like the Allsopp Helikite constructed with a rolling heat sealer (on left).
I feel this way a lot
“When sophistication loses content then the only way of keeping in touch with reality is to be crude and superficial. This is what I intend to be.” Paul Fey...
New HTZ!
There’s a new Hack This Zine out! Check out 10.5, where there’s a great dialogue about the coming Robocracy. hilarious, and telling. Flatline points out t...
Grassroots Mapping PDX: workshop flights
I realized I forgot to link these up on my blog:
Grassroots Mapping PDX: test conclusions
With help from my Dad, RJ Steinert, Samantha Mitchell, Robby Kraft, and Molly Danielsson, I’ve been flying balloons most weekends since the workshop in June,...
Grassroots Mapping PDX: flight images
I still haven’t stitched together a map from my helium flight on 7/9, but here are some great aerial photos:
GrassrootsMappingPDX: Heat Seaming
Here’s the instructional video from the workshop on heat seaming balloons. If you have the space and equipment, this will produce a lighter, more air-tight ...
Grassroots Mapping PDX: Taping up balloons
I’ve finally collected and edited the workshop’s videos and instructions:
warhol while you wait
I’ll have photos and videos from Grassroots Mapping up soon, Special thanks to Dustin Zemel for documenting.
Today went great
Thanks Sabrina, Lindsey, & Molly for bringing food, Dustin & Jane for documenting, Robby, Anna, Wade, Tuuli, Joel, Samantha, Dennis, & Scott for ...
Thank You Lippman Co.
**Lippman Co. party supplies **gave me a business discount and two free days of tank rental on helium, thanks!
Solar Blimp to Cross English Channel
While I’m preparing for a workshop where we’ll build some solar hot-air balloons, a very different solar aerostat, running of photovoltaics, is set to cross ...
Helium Dispersion Through HDPE
In conversations on the Grassroots Mapping google group we’ve been wondering how long a homemade Polyethylene helium balloon could stay aloft. At what rate ...
Thank You Kite Studio
A huge thanks to Kite Studio, who just gave me a free shipping upgrade so we could have enough supplies for our workshop this Saturday!
Grassroots Mapping @ Gallery Homeland 6/26
Click here for a print-quality image.
Grassroots Mapping in the Gulf- Long Beach, Mississippi (and Portland, OR)
I threw up a quick link to Grassroots Mapping a few weeks ago, and in the mean time they’re on it! Check out their latest stitch of Long Beach,
Work at Grand Detour tonight
I’ve got a 6-channel video piece up at Grand Detour‘s grand opening. Also up is work by Dustin Zimmel and Ním Wunnan. Check it out and join Research Club’s F...
Balloons, YES!
More wonderful balloon links:
a number of updates
This blog has been falling behind, I’m just going to summarize what I’ve been up to.
Links
Updated the books I’ve been reading section. Check out Inter Ice Age 4.
Quick Links
I’ve been very busy with a trans-continental move and more… So I’m going to try to just post links regularly, rather than longer things.
Cloacina: My Other Project
I’ll be blogging about (and working on) radical plumbing over here.
Why I Made a Mutoscope (design rationale)
There are many reasons to love mutoscopes, from nostalgia to mechanical beauty, but any expensive niche medium competing with less expensive and widely avail...
Aerospace Resolutions for a New Year
I know I’ve been talking a lot about mutoscopes (that thing took all my time), but I really will get back to balloons. Here’s a shot of a new design I’m wor...
Oh, Done. (forgot to tell the internet)
Lots more to come, but I finished the Mutoscope 2 weeks ago… been totally buried in work. Now in Oberlin, OH for one more week, Philly next weekend, then Bos...
Other Mutoscopes + Micro Movie Projectors!
Two other people making mutoscopes:
No/Low Tech Magazine
Kris de Decker produces some of the most insightful and well-researched articles on technology anywhere on the internet. He has a simple premise- novel “hig...
Mutoscope Finishing & Miniaturizing
Between coats of paint and sealer, waiting for the last epoxy bonds to take hold, and tweaking the Mutoscope’s tripod I’ve played around with small mutoscope...
Romanians to space with a solar balloon?
Real quick, this came in via Yahoo Solar Balloons group. I didn’t even know these guys were working. The record of balloon stages for rocket launches is a me...
See the Mutoscope Tonight (and RC Blimps!)
Should’ve posted this on Monday. I’ll be at the Make NYC event tonight in Manhattan with my mutoscope, fully loaded with Fernando Renes latest animation. T...
A Mutoscope, nearly finished
Fernando Renes’ animation finally came back from the printer’s last weekend, and Molly helped me bind it into a mutoscope reel. since my last post everythin...
Boy Floated Away- NOT EVEN POSSIBLE
Helium can lift approximately 65lb per 1000 cubic ft. From the images in the video, the balloon was no more than 12ft in diameter, or approximately 900 cubic...
Robert Rochte is going to launch on Oct 15 UPDATE:POSTPONED
Robert Rochte and his class at Grosse Pointe Academy build advanced superpressure polyester solar balloons that are normally cylindrical. he just announced t...
The mutoscope running for real!
Some photos of the **mutoscope **from the last week. It runs, it projects! Everything needs to be tightened up (and quite a bit re-built) so it can be ship...
Using columns to manipulate user behavior
web activist aaron swartz’s blog uses two columns that are left and right aligned. in a large browser window they open a gaping hole in the middle of the page.
6 weeks, 480 frames: a mutoscope cartridge
Where I’ve been the last six weeks is cartridge land. Lots of production problems. For the hub I had to switch from lathe/cnc to stereolithography, and the...
Airship Profile Simulator
over at AirshipWorld, Andreas has created a new version of his airship profile simulator. It’s only good for rotationally symetrical pressurized envelopes (...
The First Self-Blogging Aerostat?
I’ve recently gotten in touch with Chris Fries in Chicago through the Balloon_Sked mailing list for amateur near space balloon missions. He’s not going to n...
Solar Aeronaut Christophe Praturlon has a blog! (in French)
I don’t speak French but expert solar aeronaut Christophe Praturlon has a blog I just found out about. Good videos and pictures including crewed launches.
Coop with Simple Egg-Collecting Laying Boxes
Molly and I made a chicken coop last week with laying boxes designed after those on her father’s farm. As far as we can tell, they’re a Gunnar Danielsson or...
Katie Festinger’s Farm, pt 1
Molly and I have been working/staying at Katie Festinger’s nascent farm in Chimacum, WA (near Port Townsend) on and off for the last 3 weeks. Katie sought w...
JP Aerospace’s DIY Airship Breakthrough
Most home-built airships are non-rigid using envelope pressure to maintain their shape. That’s because** rigid airships** normally have to be huge to suppor...
A Pattern Language Picnic Table
Our first project in Chimacum was a social one- the farm lacked an outdoor public space. Beth really wanted a nice central area, so we cleared out storage u...
The Puritan Panopticon
I’ve been reading Albion’s Seed, recommended to me by Paul Singer, and recently found on a bookshelf here in Port Townsend. The Puritan history is horrifyin...
Subjection at the Seattle Public Library
Overall I loved the Seattle Public Library Central Branch, but some design consultant somewhere has a bad attitude towards the public- several spaces scream ...
Nomadic Furniture is re-published
Nomadic Furniture is a brilliant book series, and now you can get 1 & 2 for the cost of one of the used first edition books. Hopefully the re-print will ...
Samantha Mitchell in the National Portrait Gallery
My friend Samantha is a finalist in the National Portrait Gallery competition and will have her work up in DC. yEAH!
Blast Domes and Opaque Projectors
A good chunk of Toorcamp occurred in a Titan 1 missile silo amongst a complex of hemispherical blast domes. The power dome is the largest and least obstruct...
Aerospace at Toorcamp
Several amateurs played in aerospace around Toorcamp, and many more space lovers and hobbiests were present. JonM from Hackerbot, who is one of the leads on ...
Back from Toorcamp & exhausted
I achieved my primary goal of getting a ham radio license, and I met all sorts of amazing people. If only one of them gets back to me I’ll be elated (already...
Ready for West Coast Island Living (just arrived at ToorCamp)
So Molly **and I packed up all our stuff and moved out of New York, at least for the summer. We’ll be on the San Juan Islands, trying to learn about green ho...
Plant Something Edible This Year
…or meet someone who is. Not to sound like a kook, but farmers aren’t getting the loans they need to plant out all those amber waves of grain that our indust...
What the Butler Saw
In 1894 Herman Casler, a former engineer for Edison, brought to market a motion picture machine that avoided expensive and dangerously flammable nitrate film...
1st Meeting, Chris Alexander Reading Group
So Molly and I started a Christopher Alexander book club, and after our first meeting on Monday we’re up to four people- me, Molly, Harry, and Helki.
Magnificent Flight, Failed Recovery
I spent the last two weeks of March in the SF/Bay Area, and while there decided to try a new balloon. My intent- record the sounds of California by air. I...
Head Full of Glue
Superglue is for more than just putting the handle back on your housemate’s favorite mug and hoping she doesn’t notice. Molly and I glued my face back toget...