jwesterman – Page 10

November 20, 2017

Nature’s Leaf Blower.

Remember that I mentioned at some point the wind would come and blow the leaves into the neighbor(s) yard(s)? Well, that day was last Sunday morning!

I apologize for the wind noise in advance. I did this on my iPhone which makes no attempt at compensating for windy conditions.

I love that part of nature. I no longer have to have a leaf blower. We enjoy the leaves and color until the first major wind storm and then they are all gone!!

They don’t make much of a mess … but they’re still gone!

During the time I took the video above I also took a time lapse from the front yard. At the beginning of the video above Mongrel and I move in and out of the frame. Here’s what the day looked like all sped up:

The winds have died down some. That leaves us with autumn with the color gone and we seemed to be moving very hard towards full blown winter. We’ve had fires in the fireplace pretty much every hour of the day for a few weeks now. At least it’s warm inside.

Since the wind wasn’t so bad tonight I was able to get out and do some flying. We spent some time today trying to figure out if we can get a cat in a plane and fly him around. After a careful pre-flight inspection we’ve decided to work on that a while longer.

He seemed to be up for it, though.

This plane has a symmetrical wing which means that it flies upside down as easily as right side up. Definitely an acrobatic bird. I’ll be doing some repairs on this guy as well as replacing all of the electronics related to telemetry and flight control with new, updated avionics. This plane was built long ago with some very old electronics but by a person with wicked engineering skill.

You may recall, I bought this at auction a few months ago. Along with 3 more planes. This one is the largest and heaviest of them all. It’ll be the last one I get flying if things go like I planned. Hopefully by the end of winter or maybe spring I’ll be flying this guy regularly. Of the four I bought I have one of them back in the air and it’s a hoot to fly. It’s previous life was a glider that was launched in to the air with a rubber band. I’ve added a small motor, electronic speed controller, new servos and a flight control receiver. Now I hand launch it, fly it up high and then just glide around after that. Pretty cool.

But before the Extra comes off the earth I’ll pre-flight the crap out of it. I built one of these in the 90’s when I lived overseas where I crashed it on it’s first flight. I have better skill now. And a great place to practice and fly them.

Thanksgiving is in a couple of days. I hope you all are with friends and family or where ever it is that you find happiness this time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 14, 2017

November Sunrise

This is how the day got started around here.

I haven’t posted in a while. No excuse except that I’ve been traveling a ton. First a motorcycle trip with my dad and brother and then travel for a week for my work. I’m going to try to fit a lot of that in to a post soon. I don’t have anything, I don’t think, from my work travel but do have some from my motorcycle trip that I can share.

But before that, I got news this morning that my radio club, Loudoun Amateur Radio Group, came in first in class for ARRL Field Day 2017 this year. We had 5 operating positions running simultaneously which put us in class 5A. The “A” means we did not use commercial power and kept our transmitters under 100 watts for the 24 hour event.

2017 Field Day results. We came in 1st in our 5A class in the nation.

On top of those results we were also:

– #2 in Virginia behind a very large 12A team in Woodbridge
– #13 in the nation overall.

The last few years have been building years as we recover from the loss of many of our core members. But it looks like we are getting back on track. We start planning for 2018 here soon.

I was gonna make this post longer but for the sake of completing this and my day simultaneously … here you go.

I hope you have a good day.

October 27, 2017October 27, 2017

Fall has arrived 2017..

Fall has definitely arrived in Virginia.

Up until the last few days it’s been quite a temperate October. It’s not been cold much at all so far with some days feeling more like August than October. But that all changed this week with the first hard frost happening last night. All of the plants that need to be inside have been moved in where they will spend the winter. They’ve done very well since I’ve figured out a way to automate the watering of the plants. I need to figure out the same for inside so they don’t get over/under watered and I don’t flood the basement with bad code in a computer that I program to do the job.

I learned earlier this fall that we have a persimmon tree in our yard. This tree came here to live on it’s own over the years. It’s in an area that used to be an open field but I have stopped cutting the grass to let it go back to whatever nature comes up with it. It’s the only persimmon tree that is old enough to produce fruit that I’ve found so far.

Persimmons are crazy bitter if they are not ripened on the tree. But once they get to this point on the tree they are quite tasty! I’ve been reading that persimmons can be harvested and stored in fruit jars for the winter. Maybe next year project? In the mean time I’ll eat as many of these the deer don’t beat me to until they are gone.

Mongrel “helping” me take photos of persimmon fruit.

Mongrel is quite the tree climber now.

Speaking of fall, every time this year the silver maple trees in our yard start the process of turning from deep green to bright yellow and orange. In a week or two these trees will look like a burning bush. Hopefully there will be another clear blue sky day with the more yellow color leaves when they arrive.

The maple trees are over 10 years old now. Maybe 15. I’ve forgotten when we planted these guys. By the time I leave this planet hopefully they will be big, tall and add color to this property for the next generation who will enjoy them as much as I do. From what I read they could get very large in their lifetime.

Mongrel and I have done a bunch of walking the last few days. He loves these walks we do every day. He would stay out with one of us walking all day long if we could actually do that.

Black fur is still a little hot in the direct sunshine.

Which we can’t, of course.

When I’m in my office working with a window open he sits below the window and meows until I either have to close the window so I can work or come outside to be with him.

When he’s inside and I can’t go outside he just doesn’t understand. So he does this:

And protests loudly that he is not outside. Eventually he either gives up and takes a nap until we can play or we have to figure a way to get him outside so he can go find a small furry creature to “play” with.

It’s evening now where we’ve completed yet another walk. He’s asleep at my feet with a mouse on a string. No protest this time. He’ll be awake again soon and want to go back outside where all the small furry critters hide in the bush.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow we get up and do it all over again.

I hope you’ve had a good day and tomorrow is what you want it to be.

October 27, 2017

Sunrise October 27, 2017

The sunrise this morning came after a ver hard frost. You’ll see the sun melt off the frost from the ground as it rises.

Once again, I wasn’t up to see this particular sunrise but my Raspberry Pis were and this is what they saw.

I hope your day started as peacefully as mine.

October 18, 2017

Sunrise October 17, 2017

Yesterday I was up early and out he door for a meeting in DC. When I bounced out of the garage I looked up and saw this:

That part of a sunrise is appealing. The getting up part … not so much.

Click on the picture and look a the moon. I posted a similar picture I took with my iPhone but you could not make out the moon after the dumb down the image so it fits in their ecosystem.

I hope you have a nice day.

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

Tuesday Oct 10, 2017

It was a busy day of work that started very early but an otherwise quiet day.

There wasn’t much interesting to talk about or take a picture of while I was working and nothing interesting to report there. After working more when I got home it finally stopped around 6pm. Mongrel, Gloria and I went for a walk for a few minutes to enjoy the sunset and quiet evening in the country.

One of my video cameras caught us during a time lapse.

You can see in the video how calm the weather is but what you can’t see is how humid and hot it is. At sundown the temperature is still in the 80’s and the humidity is above 90%.

The trees are starting to change ever so slightly all over the county. They must be confused by the warmer weather we’ve had. I think that the lack of sunshine during the day is what triggers all that. The colors may not be as bright as they’ve been in years past with all the rain and warmer weather. But I’m just guessing on that.

I flew one of my RC planes before the sun went completely down. The wind was calm and air smooth which makes for good weather to do aerobatics. So I did a ton of aerobatics. By the time I landed I could barely see the plane if it weren’t for the strobe lights I have on it. That’s always good fun.

Maybe one day I can do this:

That is so crazy!

I hope you did something fun today.

October 8, 2017October 10, 2017

It’s Sunday … today we rest.

Today it will rain most, if not all, of the day. We are thrilled:

He’ll be waiting a while for the rain to stop.

Conveniently the girl cats came inside this morning, ate and slithered downstairs without me noticing. Mongrel was outside and wanted inside almost immediately when he was the weather. So I shut the basement door and let him in while leaving the back window open so he can come and go.

Eventually he came up where I’m working, protested for a short period of time before laying down and playing with anything that moves. Then asleep.

That’s sort of how I woke up this morning. First at 6 (this will never happen unless the house is on fire), then 7, then 8 … fed the cats … then 9 and finally up at 10am for good.

I’m very curious if that video will work for you since I’m not sending it through YouTube like I normally would.

Yesterday I spent most of the day cutting all 20 acres of grass on the property knowing that it was going to be raining all day today. I sort of unmotivated to go do much of anything other than work on my computer here in my office today. Maybe later this afternoon I’ll grab my camera and head for the hills. We’ll see.

The rain has subsided some enabling me to go outside and snap a few photos.

It’s about nightfall … where do these guys go when it’s dark outside?

A bumble bee all clumbsy and covered in pollen.

Sundays really should be just lazy, do nothing days.

October 3, 2017

Start of my day, Sunrise October 3, 2017.

It all started like this:

I had to give up some blood for a blood test this morning at 8:30 so I was up early to head out for that appointment. I didn’t get to see the actual sunrise but I did get to see the start of an early morning around here.

Sometimes it’s hard to think about how peaceful my existence is when there is so much crazy going on around me. Run. Fight. Hide.

The work I do has been interesting and stimulating lately. Things change a lot, the opportunity to learn new things is nearly constant and the level of work load has been very manageable unlike years past. So it’s all good. I’m enjoying this time of life.

As much as I hate to admit it I did some damage to my tower 2 this past weekend by putting excessive load on the lifting structure at the base of the tower.

It started out by trying to unwind a steel cable that was binding on the worm drive drum. After extending the tower on the ground I needed to lift it like 4″ to clear the high point of the ground. I thought I could lift it extended that much but instead of lifting it did this damage. Ugh. I’ll need a new tower base and lifting arms. I don’t trust metal that has been bent like this. Once it’s bent it’s no longer good. Unfortunately, I think I ruined it.

The tower up/down mechanisms are still fine. But the lifting mechanisms need some work. The power of a worm drive winch is nothing short of amazing. Every time I move that tower it’s a bit frightening at some level. There is a lot of steel and technology on that thing. That it moves is simultaneously both wonderful and unnerving.

I hope you do something fun today.

September 27, 2017September 27, 2017

It’s fall!

Fall (autumn equinox) was Friday, September 22 (today)at 4:02 PM. Happy fall, y’all.

It doesn’t feel much like fall yet outside while it’s still 90º during the day at some point. We haven’t had rain in a while so things are drying out pretty good but that is totally normal. Frankly surprised it didn’t dry up a bit in August but August was cool and wet for us here.

I took a lunch break and saw the bees actively getting all the honey they could. I think this is a golden rod plant which I masked to black and white to show the bee a little better. The sun was wicked bright today so the light was quite harsh.

When I look at this photo on the blog it looks “fake”. But it’s really not. here is the unmasked photo:

It’s so interesting what you can do with a computer and photography these days. I often wonder how one would go about doing something like this if all we had to work with was a negative and dark room. I suspect it would be quite difficult if not impossible.

This is easy to do with Photoshop. Just create a black and white layer mask and “unmask” where you want to color to come through. A few “scribbles” with a mouse or Wacom pencil will complete the work.

I flew my drone about ¾ mile away from home to check out the pavement on 287 near our home. I didn’t make it off the property today so I have no idea of their progress. Turns out the road is still not paved.

While I was up there I took a few photos of the farm. Here’s one above the back fields after a hay harvest today. The drone was about 100 meters in the air at the time.

With no clouds in the sky it’s easy to take some high contrast black and white images. When I was looking at the images I was trying to figure out why my camera had these dots on the image. When I zoomed in it was clear that these are spiders building their night webs in the tall grass. If I posted this on Facebook all that detail would be erased. But if you click on the picture below you’ll see them.

Another fall day begins early tomorrow morning. All critters here have found their safe spot, box or both. I hope you’ve found yours too.

That is all for now.

zw+pmbtDsl7HAVqTKNMU4Pz2CeNXx4Pc4IzO+FKcLEp1ja5aQxA65wqIujpgD0d28fFvYCJiEIBN1vr4DVo0SaX2eKE=

September 21, 2017

Fall Sunrise.

As you know, I don’t get up early enough to see most of these.

As summer moves into fall the sun rises more to the right of my window each morning. As we get closer to October it seems like it goes much faster each day than the day before.

When the air temperature is different than the ground temperature we experience the low lying fog every morning that blows about in the light wind. This happens pretty much every spring and fall morning when the sky is clear or mostly clear. Today was no exception.

It’s nice here today. Barely a whisper of wind under a mostly clear sky.

Tonight we start planning for the Lovettsville Oktoberfest event in the small city near our home. I volunteer at this event with the Loudoun Amateur Radio Group. It’s a fun few days if you have time and are near here.

Tomorrow is the first night of the festival and then Saturday is the crazy day when 10-15,000 people show up between 6am and 6pm in this dinky town of Lovettsville. It’s a fun time at a great time of year around here. The weather is supposed to be basically perfect this weekend and on into next week.

These flowers grow as weeds in our yard. The other day I had to weed eat around this rock and thankfully they came back a few weeks later. When they all get together and grow all at the same time they are pretty flowers that look like they’ve been planted there.

And, of course, what a normal day would be without a climbing exercise on our walk together?

Boring, I think.

He’s “paws up” in his box.

And that’s where I go now.