KAP Rigs
Like many other KAPers, I build my own rigs, but my designs tend to be more custom than most other rigs are, including custom camera platforms and custom electronics. I don't usually make rigs for other people, but some of the rigs I've made for my own use are shown below, with the newer ones toward the top of the page.
You can see more of my rigs at my Flickr Kap Rigs page
Here is a rig made with carbon tubing (kite spars) and ABS blocks milled on a CNC machine. The Picavet folds up to make a very narrow profile for transporting.
From the back, you can see the DuneCam™ controller mounted behind the camera.
This rig was made of carbon fiber cloth over a foam core. This type of composite material gives the best strength-to-weight ratio and allows rigs to be built significantly lighter than they could be by using aluminum.
This rig was made of 4 layers of 6 oz carbon fiber cloth. Although very strong, it was not as stiff as I would like.
Here is a rig using the KAPsure™ II system. The frame is brushed aluminum.
This was an experiment to see how light of a rig I could make. It was constructed using two layers of 6 oz CF cloth over a foam core using a vacuum bagging technique. The components in the picture weigh 35 grams. The total rig weight was 185 grams, including the camera, Picavet suspension, KAPsure™ II system and battery.
This rig has a frame made of carbon fiber and Kevlar molded under pressure around a form.
It uses my KAPsure™ II system. Fully loaded, this rig weighed 230 grams (8 oz).
This rig used my KAPsure™ I system for control of the servos and for downlink of the digitized video signal.KAPsure™ I used a separate video camera for video downlink. The ground controller on this system was a custom designed CompactFlash (CF) card plugged into a Pocket PC, which controlled the rig and displayed video.
The frame was made of carbon fiber plates connected with aluminum brackets. This type of carbon fiber frame is less strong than frames made of continuous carbon fiber and is only marginally lighter than aluminum.
