Production of our Selfie Camera Booms is coming along nicely - we continue to be the World leader in Hang Gliding Selfie sticks - the only one that we am aware of!! :)
Just in time for the holiday season, we have made some changes to the line-up and we hope to have all the new options shipping to you before Christmas - this makes the perfect gift for the hang glider pilot in your life.
Less Bounce - not that there was ever that much bounce, but we always like to tweak an improve our products. We found that the little rubber washer between the boom and the base allowed the boom to bounce ever so slightly. It didn't make a difference for taking still pictures while airborne but in turbulence, shooting video resulted in a bit of a bounce. We found only non-pilots noticed it - as pilots, we are used to that constant bounce. We replaced it with an embedded O-ring which brought the gap between boom and base to next-to-nothing. Another side-effect-advantage is the O-rings were discoloring the plastics - just an eye-sore!
Carbon - every pilot loves carbon. Of course it is cool to the look but the advantages for our carbon booms are two-fold - stiffer and lighter. Putting even the latest llight action cameras out a few feet on a stick will result in bounce. Going carbon will minimize this. I prototyped a 3' carbon boom this summer and flew it in the rough air of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The video was way smoother even though it stuck out an extra foot from our normal 24" aluminum booms.
There were two problems with a 36" boom though...they are crazy expensive to ship to customers, especially our international pilots. I thought it would be too expensive to justify. The second issue is that it wouldn't fit in my harness bag for travel.
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Detachable two-piece - We are just getting around to putting the finishing touches on a 36" two-piece carbon boom. They will be the same cost to ship and only slightly more, due to the added cost of the carbon rods. And you will get the advantages listed above - stiffer, less bounce, lighter and easy to transport in your harness bag. We are only doing a run of 12 to see what kind of interest there are. Once they are gone, we won't have more until January or February.
What's Next ... sorry to the Atos, Icaro and Aeros carbon basetube owners out there. We are trying to find the time to program our machine for our bases to fit these carbon bars. They will come, eventually.
And I do love playing with this carbon stuff....can we go longer and still not bounce? I'll have to test that out in the spring now that winter has set in here in Canada. Please do share your winter flying pics to our Facebook Page (preferably with our boom).
You can order our booms online here