Mongrel and I went for our normal walk today. He was patient while I shot some photos and video during the golden hour of the day.
Sunset with Mongrel, July 18, 2018
Mongrel is a sweet boy. Well, as long as you are not another cat. In particular, another cat named Mary Jane. Otherwise he’s the most laid back and docile animal I know.
Around Mary the cat things change. She turns into the anti-Christ and he goes pretty nuts too. My thinking is that the relationship started out pretty rough and that just carried forward. At least for Mary it did and he doesn’t ignore her. When he was a kitten she would tear into him randomly; Swatting, biting, growling and the like. It was all good until he got older and stronger. When they meet now it’s quite a show.
It’s been an interesting week. Mostly good. Sometimes weird. Just trying to figure out where to point my rudder in the coming months. The path forward is not always clear.
Here are a couple of shots from today …
Looking east … long shadows.Panorama of the sunset.
I flew my winged camera to get a picture of the Virginia countryside just before a rain storm. I’ve annotated this image so you can get an idea of what you are looking at this time.
Virginia Countryside looking north from home
To the left is Harpers Ferry, WV where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers come together and through the gap in the mountains there where I’ve marked “Potomac River”. This is where I go fishing most. Lots of small mouth bass there.
Lovettsville is the closest city and were we get our mail. And if you keep driving north you’ll run into Brunswick and Frederick, Maryland.
For being so close to such a major city like Washington DC the Virginia countryside 50 miles west of there is very rural. Don’t believe me? Call Comcast or Verizon and try to get Internet service out here.
It hasn’t rained in 10+ days until today. As I got back from my run today the skies started to turn a little on the dark side. I looked up the weather and saw this:
Thunderstorms brewing July 17, 2018
I’m standing at the blue dot on that map. The rain would soon come:
Thunderstorm arrival July 17, 2018
Then the rains came! The temperature dropped from the 90º’s to the low 70º’s. It’s very nice outside right now. And clear. That’s the fun part of these storms. It rains, the environment changes completely and all the night creatures come out. The frogs, for example, are now out like mad. The mama deer and her two new fawns also came out for a bit.
I came inside, grabbed some dinner and came into the radio room to chat with some friends. Mongrel finally joined me. First on my desk. Then on my lap.
Mongrel on my radio deskMongrel now on my lap
Soon it’ll be time to go to sleep! Actually, time to go to sleep now.
Most of the day was cloudy and spitting rain. That was good for me because I had a ton of work to do around the farm. From trimming trees to bush hogging our road it was a busy day on machines of various types.
We also sold our ping-pong table to someone who would provide it a good home. I hope his kids have fun playing on the board. The best part of the sale of this is that it’s taking up space in his garage now, not mine.
Tonight I was cooking a steak and out of nowhere a wasp landed and stung me on my nose. I used to think that getting stung on the temple was a bitch but now I think the nose is the worst. It’s been over an hour and my nose is still throbbing. I get stung a couple times a year so I’m becoming an expert on where being stung hurts the worst.
The day was pretty hazy and humid. I wear loose cotton clothes that cover all my skin. That makes working in the summer hot. When I got home I was soaked from head to toe with sweat. It was nice to take a shower and relax in the cool of the evening. It was 75º as the sun set tonight.
Speaking of sunset … here’s what it looked like:
Sunset July 15, 2018
At about the same time I turned the camera away from the sun to get the valley between the hills where we live. Looking to the left of the photo is Harpers Ferry where the gap in the mountain lets the Potomac river come through on it’s way to the ocean.
Looking towards Brunswick, Maryland.
There are lots of pastel colors this time of the day.
The moon and Venus are very close to each other today and tomorrow. I was too lazy/tired to go get my camera and take a picture of that. Hopefully they will be reasonably close tomorrow evening and I’ll get the photo then.
If you know I like sunsets then you probably also know also like sunrises but I can’t seem to get up early enough to see them. Getting up early is not something I generally do on my own. I usually arrive there from the day before.
It would be way more convenient if the sun would rise around 10am. If it did, I could get up, get some tea, check my e-mail, pay some bills THEN look out the window. But, lately it’s happening around 5:30am. Who has time for that?!
OK, back to the sunset yesterday.
I’ve posted the following photo on Instagram and Instagram does what Instagram does best with photography … completely screw it up. How can you take a photo like this with such nice detail and screw it up?
Well, start with making it a 1 by 1 square. Then take out all of the detail that tells the story. Then make people put their words around it to explain what is going on. Then claim it’s the only way to get your story out.
Shenandoah Sunset from Hogback Overlook on Skyline Drive
I like the above photograph but it’s not my favorite. I took a few others that I liked equally as well. Here is one:
Shenandoah sunset from Hogback Overlook
In the photo above I was getting ready to take pictures right when the sun was going over the mountain. My goal in the photographs that follow is to tell the sunset story with some depth of the mountains in front of it.
At this time of the “golden hour” just before the sun sets light springs up from everywhere. It’s at this time of the day that I go from being isolated in my environment to where people start to show up all around me to take in the experience. While I like a good sunset others clearly do as well.
My favorite photos of the landscape are panoramas. The following shot is actually three shots that I’ve sewn together to make a single image. I do it in a way that you can not tell where one photo ends and the other begins. Over the years, I’ve obtain the skill and software to pull it off well. It’s been a long road trying to figure out how to do this. My journey in panoramas started in the 1980’s. It’s only been recently that I’ve figured out how to do it in a way that looks good to me.
Note that the photo below is only a thumbnail … you will need to click the photo to get the detailed panorama shot I mention.
The following photography is one I would actually print and hang on my own wall. After all, that is what photography is for me. It doesn’t matter to me that you might not like it. It matters a lot if I like it. The older I get the more I enjoy my own work. Why it took me so long to get here I really do not know.
If you do click the link below make sure you zoom in and look at the detail. And then realize I still have the original that has 10 times the detail in it. That photo shows exactly what I saw with my own eyes yesterday. I have to say, it’s pretty cool.
This year’s “Field Day” was held Friday through Sunday, June 22, 23 and 24, 2018. The planning for the event was started in 2017 and continued right up to the days before.
We moved the event from where we’ve been having it in years past to Franklin Park, Purcellville, Virginia. This is a very public location inside the park grounds where anyone from anywhere could come and join us for the event.
… if it weren’t for the rain. Honestly, I don’t know when it started and when it stopped or even how much we got but it was a lot of rain. We set up the towers on Friday in torrential downpours which continued through the days. It did manage to clear up some on Saturday but it rained every day this year.
And when we were cleaning up a small storm came through with wind and more rain! Here’s what that looked like on radar:
Thunderstorm. Field Day 2018.
Man, did it rain. I sought refuge in my van but others didn’t make it out of the path in time. Some of the tents had to be held down manually and some did not make it from what I understand which exposed a lot of gear to the elements. Last report is that all electronic gear made it out OK with some drying effort.
Speaking of van. I don’t know how I was able to get all this gear from my home to the park and back but managed to do just that. It took a lot of help from others.
Van full of gear. Field Day 2018
The preliminary report has been published and from that information it looks like we did a fine job. It wasn’t a year where we blew out the numbers but we all did a good job making as many contacts as possible. That is what it is really all about.
One thing I set out to do this year was to learn more about satellite operations. Steve, KS1G was kind enough to walk me through some of what he was doing there. I took this short time lapse of his antennae at work:
When things are moving that fast you have to deal with all kinds of physics (like Doppler effect). It’s a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly while saying your ABCs backwards. I still have a lot to learn.
I didn’t take that many photos and the photos I did take I did so with my mobile phone. So the pictures are what they are. Being sleep deprived most of the weekend I don’t remember much of the detail I just remember that I needed to take some photos every once in a while. So this is what I got. For those photos go here.
If you want to know more about Field Day for our club or our club in general go here.
All the gear is back in it’s place, my station is back to normal at home. Another Field Day is behind me. Next up for the club, a 100+ mile bike ride. Stay tuned.
I never did write much about our Alaska trip back in 2009. It was a crazy time in life with work being busier than I can ever remember. Among other distractions there was big changes in my life.
The entire trip was some of the best times in my life yet if you asked me to pick one thing out of the trip that was the highlight of the trip it would have to be what occurred in this story.
There is a back story. Well in advance of the trip we had to choose the things we would do in our excursions. I don’t remember all the details but by the time I got around to picking what we would do we didn’t have many options.
Fly Fishing was definitely on my list. But on the day that this occurred the options I wanted were no longer available. The only option left was the most expense of all of the options. That option was to fly in an old de Havilland Beaver to the top of Denali.
Gloria had already chosen what she wanted to do that day so that left me and the girls. So I signed us up to do this together. It was approximately $300 per person for a 1 hour flight. I shrugged at the idea of spending this kind of money for such a short period of time not knowing what I would see. Little did I know it would be on my top 5 of things I’ve done in all my life. Right up there with swimming in the Great Barrier Reef or walking on the Great Wall of China.
I had two youngsters with me, one that didn’t like to fly much. Which is a little odd because she flew so much with me as she was growing up. Being a pilot with an airplane she really had no choice but to come along with me most of the times we flew together.
So the building up to getting on the plane was stressful for some, suspenseful for others. None of knew what we were about to do. There was some speculation that we would not make it to Denali at all because of the frequent weather that is almost always around the mountain. The people at the airfield said that the flight could even be cancelled if things got real bad.
So it was everything from “it’s not happening” to “it could be clear”. If it didn’t happen there were no refunds. We didn’t have any time to do it again another day so we were either going to go or not but we all knew we had one chance.
It did happen!
The plane was a de Havilland Beaver (DHC-2) with a Pratt and Whitney PT6 Turboprop conversion. It was very quiet. We flew with K2 Avation out of Talkeetna, Alaska.
On Denali. Alaska 2009
I flew in the co-pilot seat to and from Denali. Pure bliss. The entire time. All of it.
The Date is July 17, 2009. It’s just one of those days that will stay with me a lifetime.
This sunrise was pretty good start to finish. Instead of posting on Instagram I thought I’d post it here without any edits.
I have programmed a Raspberry Pi to do these sequences each morning. It takes three per day. It’s a part of a larger project I’m working on that will take over a year to complete. This is a byproduct of that project.
It’s typical this time of year to have this low lying fog on the less windy days. Between the big season changes brings wildly varying temperatures causing the fog. We’ve had so much rain in the months of May and June which has contributed to the moisture content of the ground.
This morning, as I was having breakfast before work on my gazebo, I noticed our resident hawk hunting from atop one of my telephone poles. It turns out to be a pretty good vantage point for birds of prey to watch over the property for small furry creatures flitting about. So I got my camera out, powered it on, turned on all the servos to shoot from a distance of 400 or so feet away and then just sat there observing her behavior while she hunted.
To get these three photos took about 30 minutes. The time between just looking around and taking flight was less than a second. As soon as she jumped I took about 10 shots within a second. In that time she totally panned through the image crop. I tried to follow her all the way to the ground but she was obfuscated by the tower and tall grass.
I was putting my camera away when I noticed she was back on top of the pole with her catch. With a little patients I got the hunt, the kill and the meal (a small rabbit).
The hunt …The kill …The meal … a small rabbit.
When I got home last night I noticed a new swift nest of mud and feathers under the deck by the basement door. They are skilled at putting a nest where creatures like Mongrel can’t get easy access to them. I have a thermometer under there that they have attached their new nest. I suspect they will have new birds up there soon.
The swifts are fun. When I cut the grass they fly all around me catching all the bugs that try to make an escape. They are skillful fliers and very curious about everything around them. They seem to fly close just to get a look at me when they are not catching bugs.
Swift tolerating my presence.
Most of the angels I know or have known have broken wings.
Garden angel. Broken like the rest of us.
Oh, and I’ve been wondering at times when I know it’s windy that I do not get any wind indiciation on my sensors. I figured out why the other day! A meadowlark has decided that he/she can sit on top of the sensors and, without moving, can get a 360º view of everything around it. Ha.
It’s been a while since I have posted so I’m going to drop a photo or two from the last couple of days. After doing some work in the yard having not done so for 7 days we cleaned up and went for a drive mapping out some new roads around home. As is often the case, we were blocked by a passing train. This one hauling 150 cars full of coal headed to Washington.
Coal train headed to Washington, DC.
It has been raining like crazy around home. On Sunday evening it rained 10 inches near here and subsequently washed out many small bridges where we were driving closing most of the routes we would normally take for an evening stroll. At first we thought it was official maintenance of the roads but quickly learned it was mother nature reclaiming what is hers.
Switching gears… I don’t like crows, in particular, but I liked this photo from a long lens against a cloudy sky. Probably because of the high contrast.
Crow
And, finally, these bluebirds, two of so many on our property have made a nest near the well head. Every year this time the bluebirds are very active. They don’t go anywhere during the winter so they tend to stay close by. They have unmistakable markings that you can see in this photograph. Every year I say I am going to put up more bluebird houses because there are so many nesting pairs. I need to get out there and build them.
Bluebirds
I put all this stuff near the well head to keep farmers from running it over when we harvest the hay which you can see getting tall in the background. It does not interact well with farm equipment. Usually the farm equipment is the loser of any battle with only minor scrapes on the well. Concrete and steel are a formidable competitor to anything other than concrete and steel.
