I wanted a satellite view of my track in order to design and layout various track configurations. Google Earth is what comes to mind first, however the amount of zoom and corresponding resolution was not satisfactorily. Taking pictures from the roof of our house did also not meet my needs.

So I needed to build my own Satellite…

Option A) Buy a RC Helicopter and mount a camera on it.

Option B) Get a long pole and mount a camera on it.

Sad but true, I went for Option B – mostly because even my hobby budget has a spending limit. I used 2 windsurfing carbon masts, which are long, light weight and fit nicely into each other. Granted that if I would have broken a mast I could have bought that RC Helicopter in the first place.
Here are some pictures taken with our camera mounted to the mast:

Long story short, I taped a videocamera onto the mast and started slowly walking up and down the track in a “search and rescue” flight pattern. After importing my video into Final Cut Pro I took screenshots every so many seconds. The result was that I ended up with about 30 individual images that I pieced together in Photoshop.

And here is the final composite:

The track map and track layout section is currently under construction. More on this coming soon! For a sneak peek go here.