Zhou’s hobby giving him a new angle on Jiading
Print Edition
Thanks to his love of making model aircraft, Jiading resident Zhou Qianliang has been able to take a bird’s eye view of his home town by attaching a video camera to his latest model plane.
And he’s been sharing the results online for other Jiading residents to enjoy.
Zhou began making model planes when he was still at primary school some 20 years ago.
His childhood planes were simple affairs, made out cheap plastic and with crude “engines” powered by rubber bands.
Eventually he turned to battery power and instead of plastic he employed materials uses in the aerospace industry. Later on he added the latest remote control technology.
Most treasured items
Zhou has more than a dozen model planes in his collection, of which his most treasured items is a plane he made while at primary school.
It cost him about 100 yuan (US$16), which was a large amount of money for a child in the 1990s.
His latest, bought in June this year, cost him more than 10,000 yuan, four times his monthly salary.
It has a positioning system and can stay in the air for 30 minutes at a maximum height of 700 meters.
From 200 meters above the ground, its 14 megapixel camera can pick out the expressions on people’s faces.
One September morning, Zhou took his new plane to the core area of Jiading New Town to conduct a weeklong aerial photography project.
Zhou controlled the height and direction of the model plane as its camera recorded the landscape below.
The video data was transmitted to his mobile phone and, after editing, he was able to produce an excellent documentary well worth sharing with others so he uploaded it to a video sharing website.
Zhou’s model plane had flown low over the Yuanxiang Lake, making ripples on the water, hovered around the Shanghai Poly Grand Theater at a height of about 100 meters, and had recorded a panoramic view of Jiading New Town’s core areas.
In just a few days, the documentary had received over 5,000 clicks.
One Jiading resident commented that he could hardly believe Jiading was so beautiful although he had been living in the district for dozens of years. “Some of the scenes just look like paintings,” he said.
Painting-like Jiading scenery
Woods embrace lakes; clean rivers flow like with asphalt roads; high rises look impression at construction sites.
“Just stop here, I want to see for a little longer,” Zhou says as he looks at the images coming to his mobile phone from the camera in the sky above.
He operates the remote control to keep the plane in the best position for the camera to capture the best images before having it return to base.
After his documentary success, Zhou is planning to continue with his aerial photography project and he has an ambition to record every moment of Jiading’s development in the future.
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