Aerial video after the heavy rains in Phoenix

[clipper453]

This past Sunday, we received over an inch of rain in most parts of Phoenix. That's quite a lot for us considering we typically only get about 8 inches of rain all year.

For those unfamiliar with the Phoenix area, the Salt River used to run through the entire city. In 1999, the River was dammed in Tempe to create the Tempe Town Lake. Ever since, the river bed west of the lake has been typically dry.

Due to the rains this past weekend, they had to release water from the lake, which has once again filled the Salt River bed. My neighborhood is about a mile from the normally dry river bed. I was able to get some aerial shots today of the unusual sight of water flowing in the river.

Video shot with a Canon SD-40, mounted to a HobbyZone Super Cub with a custom-made acrylic plastic camera shield.

www.vimeo.com/648859

[SCC]

Great footage and a nice landing.
I like the camera shield.

[clipper453]

Thanks!

We just received some more rain yesterday, which has kept the river flowing longer than expected. I'm hoping that sometime this week I'll get a chance to fly closer to the river to get some better footage.

[garvey76]

:)That was a real nice clear video and flight.
my god if you had problems you could loose the lot in that maze of rivers and houses.
great work. ;D

[clipper453]

garvey76 said:

my god if you had problems you could loose the lot in that maze of rivers and houses.

Well, typically I keep the plane over the park area, so that if I were to have a problem, I could ditch it in the park. But for this particular flight, I did fly further over the neighborhood to get a better look at the river.

However, I did lose the plane once. The park I usually fly out of was filled with an event that day, so I chose a smaller park on the northern edge of the neighborhood. I had just replaced the tail section on the Super Cub, and apparently I didn't have the turnbuckle on the rudder pushrod set properly, because the plane kept doing tight circles upon takeoff. I quickly tried to bring the plane down, but it ended up sailing just over the wall into the neighboring trucking yard (which can be seen in the video above). The trucking yard is closed to the public and has security cameras everywhere. This was on a Sunday, so I assumed they were closed, but luckily the owner was present in the main office. After about 5 minutes of BS'ing with him, he finally let me go back to retrieve the plane. Luckily, there was no damage to the plane or any of his property. From that point on, I've been very careful about making sure my plane is properly trimmed, and I try to fly in areas that are open enough to ditch it if I had to.