My sister inlaw Janice has a friend with a home on Long Beach Island, and asked me to check on his property for him. Dave – click the links below to see the YouTube uploads of the flight.
Background
This flight was undertaken on a blustery Saturday morning to help a property owner get a look at the damage he might face on 44th street. I made sure I was not in conflict with any FEMA or local support flights during the shooting of this video, and will always yield the airspace when they are present.
I have a new video system in the airplane that I planned to us for this. It was was charged and ready to go. I grabbed my DLSR out of the trunk before I left as well, and sat in the airplane to pre-flight both camera systems – configuring the video camera to look down over the nose, and laying the DLSR on the seat beside me. The DLSR didn’t have a memory card, and I didn’t notice that, so the pictures I took while banking and flying with my feet were lost.
The Twin Comanche isn’t the best photo ship I’ve ever flown; its built for speed and has a large wing and two big engine nacelles in the way of easy downward shots. Cessna’s 172 with an open window would be more ideal for this mission – low and slow with a good downward view. None-the-less, the video gives and overview and the DLSR will work for this.
Results
The video, in my opinion, won’t tell Dave all that he wants to know. I was flying in lots of turbulence, but the 50+ mph winds helped by slowing my groundspeed on each pass. I could see sand piled up everywhere, but had to watch for traffic and couldn’t really observe the damage to an individual house. He’ll be able to tell if the house is there or not, but not what damage has occurred from the air. Those still shots straight down would have been nice.
Videos were done at 1500′ in turbulent conditions.
First pass is here…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be9CV27p3yo
Second pass found here…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVaSSdMMmzs