I am interested in many thing; aviation, photography, RC modeling (fixed wing and drone), aerial photography, amateur radio, running, biking, travel and much more. You'll likely get the gist of what I do in this blog.
I wish I had thought enough head to program the computers to get the lunar eclipse the other day. It’s so easy and I just forgot.
I was poking around through the time lapses the last few days and was about to discard this one because it just showed what I see every day. About the time I was going to shut it down I saw the moon rise from the east.
It’s been so cold that I haven’t been outside much to take many photographs so I don’t have much to contribute here tonight. Hopefully that will change soon.
I have been collecting images for a few days now. As I went outside with my camera yesterday evening the following photos came in close succession before the sun went down.
The evenings here are alive with wildlife of all kinds. I’ve been trying to get a photo of the fox that has decided to come live with us but so far have been unsuccessful. It’s been very curious of me and Mongrel. Unlike most of them that just run away this one stays and observes us.
It gets so cold here with the blowing wind that I can only take a few photos before I have to put my hands back in my pocket where I have hand warmers running full blast.
Red shouldered hawk looking for the unsuspecting from above.
As you can see from the photo above amateur radio is assisting the local wildlife. The hawk is atop one of my telephone poles with my 80-meter antenna just below.
I took several pictures of geese flying around. Every evening they seem to be looking for a place to spend the night near some body of water. You’d think they would all be sort of going in the same direction but they are going in all directions and at all altitudes but in groups about this size, all of them in the V formation. I liked the contrast of them against the sky.
Navigating a darkening sky
Interesting contrast of a single goose trying to catch up with it’s flock and the jetliner going in the opposite direction.
Progress – Or is it?
Mongrel and I still go out on our walks but it’s been so, so cold that we haven’t been goofing around like we normally do. The first few minutes we are out, as indicated here with Mongrel on the stump, are so uncomfortable I’m surprised we don’t just run back inside.
It’s so cold!
On top of it being bitter cold the winds are blowing 15+ miles an hour. I don’t know what the wind chill is and I’ll keep this G rated in trying to describe it. But it is crazy cold.
Walking on (frozen) water.
The pond (above) is frozen solid. When we were out there exploring it made a popping sound that was so loud that it sounded like a gun going off right next to us. We both jumped!
Mongrel at the pond rock. Normally we hang out here for a 20-30 minutes.Mongrel on one of our walks today. All boy.
This morning when I woke up and looked outside the frost was so think that I didn’t think I had seen it like that before. It was definitely a “hard” frost. It had the appearance of snow in the sunshine. The weather last night was uber-clear with a very light wind.
When you can’t find Mongrel … look up.
But we did manage to get in a tree climb in spite of the weather. For whatever reason Mongrel loves the game of “cat and mouse”. We play this game both inside and out, typically in the evenings. He will run and hide and I’ll have to go find him. Then I go and hide and he’ll find me. Often when I am looking for him (unsuccessfully) I’ll get ambushed from behind. I’ve never had a cat that plays like this one. Normally I’m tacitly ignored.
Saying goodbye is never easy. Some are harder than others.
Where did the time go?Saying goodbye to Olivia.
I wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t 1,500 miles from here and could pop in anytime she wanted. It’s back to work for all of us in the coming week. The holiday is about over and time to get back at life.
Gloria is off to a wedding. Helen and I are home with the cats. The cats want to be in someone else’s home. Well, two of them do anyway.
After getting up at 4am I think I’ll go to bed early tonight. Or not. Depends on what I get involved with between now and then. Ha. It always depends.
In spite of it being only 19º today we ventured out for a drive in the countryside towards Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It’s a pretty drive on any given day but most days you want to get out and check things out. Not today really. It was sort of nice to stay in the heated car. But we got out anyway.
Helen at the frozen rivers edge.Olivia cozy in a thick jacket on the C&O Canal path.I think we’ll stay out of the water today.
We had brunch at The Mellow Moods Cafe in town. I’d never been there before. They had a egg and cheese sandwich on sour dough bread that was pretty darned good! And a black iced tea to go along with it. The girls had some chips and guacamole and we were off to the next place.
The girls went in to “The Good Shop” to see what kind of things they couldn’t do without in there. We came out of the mostly unscathed. There are a few shops in Shepherdstown that are fun to visit, have some pretty cool stuff in them but I rarely buy things except for food. One of my favorite restaurants there is Betty’s. I think it’s appropriate they don’t have a web site and still get 4 stars. I like eating there. The service is good and people are always nice to me. Typical “home” cooking.
Helen and Olivia doing digital stuff.HelenChatting at lunch
We came back home via the Shenandoah River bank on the West Virginia side of things. It’s a pretty drive and there are some cool places to get out and visit but no one was really into that because of the cold.
The air temperature is headed down to single digits tonight so we’ll be close by the fire together. Two of these guys are off on airplanes tomorrow to be in other parts of the United States. It’s a bummer to see them leave but so glad we got this time together as a family.
Santa came sometime last night. He must have been in a hurry because this is the entirety of my stocking contents:
Stocking contents
At least Santa still has a sense of humor. And this is WAY better than the coal I’ve gotten in years past. Things are looking up!
It’s nice to share the holiday with our entire family. Our girls were both able to come back to their childhood home and spend a week with us together.
The best gifts are hand made.Plucking gifts from the treeI wanna go outside … but it’s too windy.Hand made comfort.
It’s been at least 2 years since we were all together as a family during the holiday. That’s all I needed for Christmas.
I hope your Christmas day was all you wanted it to be!
I never get tired of the sunrises and sunsets around here. It’s pretty amazing watching the cloud layers going in opposite direction because of the coriolis effect. After getting my license to fly I’ve never looked up at the sky quite the same. There’s a lot going on up there.
Everyone should be home at midnight tonight. I checked the winds aloft forecast for Olivia’s flight home from Denver where it looks like, in places, the winds will be over 175 miles an hour.
That the winter jet stream playing in our favor. Oh, and in Santa’s favor too. Presuming he uses the jet stream. That’s a complicated situation. Flying in winter at high altitudes is for the pros. If you are interested here are some Santa tracker sites:
Only 1 more day until winter arrives on December 21, 2017.
I like this day for a number of reasons:
a) We can get on with winter.
b) The sun stops sinking further in the sky.
c) Every day gets longer between then and summer.
Pastel skies at sun set – a common scene in winter.
Below is what that sunset looked like over time. I do a little RC flying in the time lapse as well.
Recently I have noticed that a small family of deer (doe and two young post fawn types) have started to come to the house at night to eat the bird seed that the birds don’t eat during the day. At this point they have become a fixture around here. They don’t have the normal flee instinct when we come outside any longer. At night the sleep in the front yard where I can capture them easily on infrared cameras in complete darkness.
Deer in the front yard as seen in infrared. – We are all ready for winter to begin.
As we ease into night time here everyone is finding a place to lounge.
Sock; leaning on one of us while watching the other.
I hope you have had a restful night and a great day ahead.
Lately I’ve been flying my new “delta wing” aircraft called “Recruit” and made by Ready Made RC (RMRC). I’ve put this video together to show my shenanigans trying to get some video of what it’s like to fly one as well as video from the aircraft itself.
Flying a small RC plane is really no different than flying a big one. Unless you want to crash there is a lot of preparations and testing of systems. The different being if you do crash generally it’s only pride that is damaged and something a little glue and spare parts can fix pretty quick. But when you do crash it happens very quickly and sometimes quite dramatically.
There are some outtakes from other sessions at the end of that video so watch to the end if you want to see it all.
2017 may be the year we have a white Christmas. It’s been bitter cold with highs in the 20’s lately. The sun goes down a little after 4pm so the nights are also much longer.
Today is about finishing up work so I can help Gloria get ready for her Christmas party here as well as the party we will have tomorrow night. We’ve been working in our spare time to get the house ready for all of the folks that will be here during the holidays.
I haven’t been home much but when I am I try to fly my RC planes and such when the wind dies down in the evenings. It’s absolutely freezing cold when you are out in the open with gloveless hands trying to control one of these things. I don’t have the best circulation in my fingers so I seem to get colder faster than I used to. But I fly anyway. If you look closely in the video (towards the end) you’ll see me flying a couple of my planes.
When I was up in NYC this week I bought an older typewriter. It’s a 1965 model Smith Corona with 10 point pica font. I learned to type on a machine similar to this. It’s been fun getting to learn how to use it again.
1965 Smith Corona
It’s totally old school and fun to do again.
Yesterday we went to the radio observatory at Green Bank. Back in the summer I went through the process to get a clearance to go “behind the scenes” to see how things are run, talk to scientists and other technical people at the facility.
There is a 10 mile radio exclusion zone where there are no cell towers or the like anywhere near the facility. It’s nice at times to no get any notifications at all from anyone. If that is what you would like definitely go here. Your cell phone will stop working as you approach from the mountains and will stop working the entire time you are there. It’s kinda nice.
Green bank observatory GBT scope (100 meters)
But they also don’t let you use digital cameras there so you can’t get close up shots of the scope unless you have a film camera. I don’t have those anymore. Luckily there are a ton of pictures available out on the Internet of the facility.
It’s largest scope is the “GBT”, or “Green Bank Telescope”. It’s ~100 meters in size and is essentially the size of a football field suspended in the air. It’s enormous. And it rotates 360º as well as tilts it’s elevation with precision only found at this location. There is not a larger scope of this type anywhere else on this planet. If you are near here it’s worth a drive to go see what’s going on there.
I haven’t taken too many photos lately so not much more to post here. I hope you all have a great week and upcoming holiday.
It’s cool, not so cold. But you can tell winter is on it’s way. Evenings like tonight look very much like winter with the sun so low in the sky and the wispy high cirrus clouds.
Tonight I finished up a project on my #2 tower. On my way out there I set up a time lapse sequence to capture the sunset as I worked out there before the sun set. I’ll never get used to the sun going down at 4:30 pm. By 5pm it’s dark and we are inside. I have to remind myself that in 22 days the sun will be headed back up north a few minutes each day.
I’ve mostly been posting on Instagram lately but I don’t like how it renders my photographs at all. It’s very hard to fit a 16:9 ratio image into a 1:1 hole. I have no idea why they make it so hard to put a picture on a picture platform. Ha. I also heard they are thinking about a “Re-Gramming” option. This would allow people to take someone else’s content and, like Facebook, “re-post” it on to your own timeline. If they do that, it’ll likely be the last time I use the platform. At least now people have to make the effort to take their own pictures.
Helen was home from school last week so we took the opportunity to go get the Christmas tree for the season. We’ve been going to the same place for many years. Each year the picking gets a little slimmer. This year was no different.
We did manage to find a nice tree to fit into our home but it took some time. We also created a bunch of video but the first cut of the video was quite long and the file very large so I’m not going to post it here.
Christmas tree hunt 2017
I’ve been building a new flying wing lately. This is my first wing. I’ve covered mine in laminate so it will survive a few crashes and fly a little faster. This guy is set up for FPV (First Person View) and has a spot for a video camera like a GoPro to record the flights.
RMRC Recruit Flying Wing
My plan is to mostly fly it visually until I can get comfortable flying it with my FPV goggles like I do with my drone. This guy is super fast and will do aerobatics with ease. But I’ll leave the cameras off of it until I can reliably fly it without putting it into the trees. It has three gyro modes so I can fly this with an autopilot of sorts to keep it stable. It’s amazing what you can put in such a small package.
After I finish this guy the next plane I’ll be refurbishing a gas powered biplane that I bought in the summer at an auction. It’ll be my first gas powered plane for about 20 years. The last one I famously crashed in China (no video). But back then the avionics were horrible. I’m going to gut the device and put in all new electronics inside that I’ll use to control the plane from the ground.
