Ariel photo wins Community Guide cover contest

An ariel photo featuring Maple Lake’s water tower was the winner of a contest to find a photo for the cover of this year’s Maple Lake Area Community Guide.

The photo, submitted by John Kossieck of Maple Lake, was taken from an electric-powered, radio-controlled airplane providing a unique view of the tower and the town around it.

Kossieck won $100 for his first-place photo with Karen Jude of Annandale taking the second-place prize of $50 and Eunice Holt of Maple Lake earning $25 for third place. The winning photos and other entries will be featured in future Messenger publications.

Kossieck, a machinist who works in Eden Prairie, belongs to the Wright Fliers club and the group flies their remote-controlled planes at Montissippi Park, just west of Monticello.

“We love spectators and are always looking for new members,” Kossieck said. “Anytime the air is calm, you could expect to find a few pilots flying their planes, especially on Sundays and Tuesdays.”

Kossieck, who has been flying remote controlled planes for six years, built the 2 lb. plane he uses out of styrofoam and carbon-fiber rods for about $15. However, batteries for the plane cost about $80 each and Kossieck has three of them “so I can fly indefinitely.  “Using electric radio control airplanes for aerial photography really came of age about two years ago,” he said. “The development of Lithium Polymer batteries, the same kind your cell phone uses, has been a big boost to the hobby. They have two to three times the energy density of the older Ni-Cads. Planes easily fly for 30 minutes or longer.”

And motors for his planes are created from torn-apart CD ROM drives from plans he found on the internet. “It is so easy to do,” he said. “Instructions are on the web. The World Wide Web shows you which planes work the best, which cameras work the best, how to set up your plane, etc. It’s all on line and it is a lot easier to do than you think.”

Kossieck started his ariel photography about six months ago. “I finally broke down, got the good camera and built a plane around it,” he said.

Kossieck’s camera is a Casio Exlim EX-Z750, which is a 7-mega pixel camera about the size of a deck of cards.

“Typically, when I go out on a mission, I take about 80 to 100 photos, land the plane, turn the camera on to video mode and take a 15-minute movie,” he said. “I’m getting pretty good, but out of those 100 photos, about 40 still come out as garbage, 25 are sort of cool, 25 are way cool, and 10 are absolutely perfect, stunning, crisp, wall-hangers.”

Kossieck said his services are also available for photographing farms, homes and businesses.

“Now for the disclaimer,” he said. “I only fly where it’s safe,” noting areas need to be free of trees, power lines and people.

For those who want to know more about using radio-controlled airplanes as aerial photography platforms, Kossieck compiled the following list of web sites:

The plans for his plane came from www.camerainthesky.com/buzzdog/s.

Instructions for building a brushless, three-phase, model airplane motor are on www.gobrushless.com.

And an ariel photography form featuring thousands of photos and video clips from around the world can be found at www.rcgroups.com/ forums/forumdisplay.php?=128.

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