Day Three


Early morning brought fog and low visibility. I woke up early to watch the sunrise from a long pier close to the hotel. One look out the window and went back to bed. The fog started burning off shortly after sunrise.





After a quick breakfast we headed to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge to check on the three timelapse cameras we installed last year. The first on the trip was installed on a observation platform overlooking Mustang Lake and San Antonio Bay.





It is a popular perch for vultures and other birds.


The second camera is on a elevated walkway close to the observation tower.





All of the timelapse systems are built around the Nikon D5600 and the TRLcam timelapse controller. Power is provided by a 25 watt solar and stored in a bank of eight supercapacitors. There are no batteries in the system which makes it extremely reliable for rears of use. The intervalometer timing is set by a GPS module on the control board. The GPS data is fed into a microcontroller that calculates the exact sunrise and sunset time for that location. The controller then starts taking pictures one hour before sunrise and stops one hour after sunset. In that first and last hour, four times as many images are captured. So, if the interval is set on one hour, the camera will shoot four images before sunrise and four images after sunset. The interval is set with a series of dipswitches. Very simple and very reliable.





The third camera is on a windmill tower a few miles from the observation platform.








Same setup as the other two and working well.


Before leaving the refuge we took a couple side trips down a couple walking paths. It was a great day for wildlife watching.

















About 1600 it cleard up enough for a VFR flight. So, we made our way to the airport to get setup.








The guys were in the air for about an hour and a half and had a successful trip.