{"id":1975,"date":"2018-04-11T18:12:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T00:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2018-07-01T11:31:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-01T17:31:45","slug":"aerial-photos-of-cyclists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/?p=1975","title":{"rendered":"Aerial photos of cyclists"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 4, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

My wife, Amy, is currently on a cross-country bike ride.\u00a0 It’s coast-to-coast… she started in San Diego, CA on March 3, 2018 and will end in St. Augustine, FL on April 23, 2018.\u00a0 That’s quite a trip!\u00a0 And, no, I didn’t go with her.\u00a0 Cycling is her passion, mine is aviation (ok, you probably guessed the latter).<\/p>\n

Her group is on the “southern route” which takes them through Texas.\u00a0 (Specifically, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida.)\u00a0 When she reached the halfway point — near Kerrville, Texas on March 29\u00a0 — she was within flying distance, so I got it in my mind that I’d go fly over her route, see if I could find her and take some photos of her from the air.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the weather (and other obligations) didn’t cooperate until today (April 4).<\/p>\n

While it was clear blue skies today, the wind was pretty blustery.\u00a0 I’ve had good luck so far with flying the Cavalon in gusty winds so I figured this won’t be too bad.\u00a0 I was partially right.<\/p>\n

I started fairly early, in the air before 9:30am, and had about 80 miles \"\"<\/a>to go to be in her area, near Shepherd, Texas.\u00a0 As usual, I look for anything interesting to take photos of, so….\u00a0 the first, very noticeable element to the land below me was, it was flooded!\u00a0 At this area, the Trinity River was definitely causing some flooding havoc.<\/p>\n

Despite the flooding, there was this very pretty field, with yellow blossoms throughout… where it wasn’t flooded, that is.<\/p>\n

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And though this house in the middle of a flooded field looks sad, looking at it closer I realized that it seemed to be just slightly above the flood waters, thanks to a pier-and-beam foundation that lifts it off the ground a couple of feet.\u00a0 So, hopefully they didn’t get much damage.\u00a0 But it’s probably a challenge to go to the grocery store.<\/p>\n

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About halfway to my destination area is the Cleveland, Texas airport (6R3), and I got this nice shot of it:<\/p>\n

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Another 20 minutes and I’m now close to Coldspring, Texas, which is at the east end of a road segment I knew they would be on.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The town of Coldspring <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
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Looking west, this is Hwy 150 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Using a smartphone app called ‘Glympse’, I could see where she was, but the information is usually about 10 seconds old.\u00a0 But still that’s not bad so I could get a good idea if I was above her.\u00a0 Like a good part of her trek, she rides with another woman, Linda, so I just looked for two cyclists close together.\u00a0 It turned out to be a good thing they were together because, real time, while flying, I was having a hard time making out Amy’s orange helmet.\u00a0 In the end, though, I got several good shots of her and Linda, as well as a few shots of some of her other trek members.<\/p>\n

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Cropping in, I can easily see Amy’s orange helmet. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
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Yes, I could have flown a lot lower and gotten better pictures (probably), but it would not have been safe.\u00a0 The gusts were frequent and while not unpleasant, it was still a handful.\u00a0 Trying to take pictures at the same time as handling the Cavalon, well, that wasn’t too bad, but it was hard to also keep her in view.\u00a0 So, between all the task loading, I felt a lot more safe by maintaining a higher altitude.<\/p>\n

My track for that period of time I’m trying to get pictures is interesting:<\/p>\n

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The overlapping yellow circular area is where I was trying to keep away from a cell tower.\u00a0 While I did that, I took a short GoPro video:<\/p>\n