At a recent parents’ night, James Gentles offered to visit us to take some aerial photos of the school.  Mr Gentles is the designer of a gadget which enables a camera to be controlled remotely, and he mounts his camera on a kite line.

On his web site, Mr Gentles has lots of stunning aerial photos.  Take a look.

Monday 31st May brought a day with enough wind to fly a kite and camera rig safely, and Mr Gentles was able to visit during school hours.  This allowed us the chance to deploy a couple of classes of S1 pupils to pose for the camera; standing on the tarmac to spell out ‘RHS’.

You’ll see from the photos that Mr Gentles tethers himself to his kite and dons a belt with lots of radio control gear around his waist.  He also uses a viewing device to see what his camera sees.  The system is ingenious.

On the day, Mr Gentles used a ‘delta’ style kite which measured two metres across.  If there’d been less wind he’d have flown one with a three metre wing span, to achieve the required lift.

We’d like to thank Mr Gentles for taking the time to visit and provide these photos.