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.
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.
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.
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.
Sunset yoga at home.
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.
It was a quiet but very full day. I spent most of the day on the phone on work related projects that I needed to complete today. I don’t normally talk about work but that’s what I do during the week from the time I wake until the time I sleep. I may play in between but I think about work all the time.
Speaking of playing, I was able to fly both my drone and RC plane today. It was one of those super harsh sunny days where there is no clouds in the sky. On these days it’s super hard to take a good picture that is not all washed out. It’s hard to look up at what you are controlling from the ground and for the same to look down and take a decent photo.
Of all the photos I took during the day this the one I liked the most.
Sunny day in Virginia, September 19, 2017
I post in Facebook as well but Facebook will down sample the image and make it look like junk. If you touch the one here you’ll get a full photo that you can fill your screen with and really see what it looks like. Even this one is downsampled a bit. It’s only a JPEG image out of a GOPRO 3 camera. It’s amazing what that little camera will do. When it’s hung under a drone and lifted into the air I just think it changes everything about photography.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a picture from the bottom of a drone. It was way, way before it was the cool thing to do. I was mesmerized. I mentioned to Gloria that this is going to be a big thing when it catches on. And it did catch on. People like Casey Neistat became quite famous flying drones and publishing videos.
One of the things I did today was work on my weather station. The Raspberry Pi computer had a disk failure and won’t boot. A year ago I bought some “cheap” microSD cards to use as disks. They have all failed so that didn’t pay off. Name brands for me from now on. I’ll pay a little extra for those things now. None of the SanDisk brands have failed even after years of use. They are not hard to fix but it takes too much time. I’ll have my weather station back working again tomorrow.
Mongrel and I didn’t go for our normal walk today. Instead we played in the grass. Well, he played in the grass while I troubleshot my weather station some during one of my breaks from work. Watch it to the end if you want to see what it looks like for a cat to run through grass like a deer … but he’s only a cat.
We won’t tell him he’s any different.
It’s quiet here. Everyone is sleeping. Tomorrow is on the horizon and should be similar to today.
I hope you’ve had a nice day today. If not, I hope you have a better day tomorrow.
This weekend was about goofing off. Goofing off as much as possible. It all started like this:
… sunrise September 17, 2017
Officially I had to do some volunteer work for my radio club but that was over before 10am Saturday which left the rest of the day to do something I’ve had in my calendar for a while now: The Flying Circus.
We didn’t stay long but we made a day of getting there and back like we tend to do now and again. Typical trip down I-81 where you have to be crazy to be with crazy. But it was OK with both of us in the car together to stay distracted. Although I think my driving drives Gloria crazy. She has to listen to me postulate about statistics of queuing and crowding; the mathematical advantage of being in a small car in a big car world. 210 horse power helps but not as much as being small.
The venue for the RC event is atop a hill south of Covington, VA where people are flying all kinds of different aircraft from fixed wing to drones and even some cars and the like. But it’s mostly about flying something. It’s put on by Jeremiah at Stone Blue Airlines. Jeremiah owns the place there in Lynchburg two hours away from Covington. He’s helped me outfit some of my RC gear here that I fly. It’s cool that he’s made a living out of his passion. It’s really hard to tell when he is working and when he is playing. Which is I think the point to life.
After looking through my FPV goggles at other people flying we took back off for home in hopes of getting back at a decent hour. We lumbered along the back way home up SR220 through some really pretty West Virginia and Virginia back roads. After a dinner at the Fireside Cafe it was slabbing it back home as fast as we could once the sun went down and both of us grew tired.
Gloria had a big morning on Sunday and presentation in the afternoon so we needed to get her back and rested. She had a good, productive presentation on how to make Kombucha. She makes really good Kombucha!
Not me. I took the day (Sunday) mostly off. Besides a 5 mile run at sundown I really didn’t do much but goof off with electronics, some photography, RC flying of various types, radio. Some people have said that my goofing off looks a lot like work. I resemble those remarks.
Oh, radio. I chatted with a “DXpedition” station from the Czech Republic operating in Mauritania using call sign 5T5OK. I was parked on a 14 mhz frequency when I noticed the activity on the spectrum scope. Turns out these guys were testing their station and I was able to snag them in a “pile up” on the first call once I figured out how they were set up on the split frequency. We really didn’t chat long and they went on to making more contacts. It’s about 4,200 miles from here to there. I’m always amazed that I can just “key up” and talk to a totally different country on the planet. Makes the world seem really small. I was on and off the radios all day today which was particularly fun.
I’m working on an adjustable square wave generator circuit with a 555 timer chip. I’m not terribly good with electronics so this is half learning and half doing. I want to create a string of LEDs that use a transistor to switch between on and off at a rate that I can control with the timer chip. The circuit is gonna look something like this:
555 timer circuit
I got my bench power supply back from the shop so I can start building stuff again. Or breaking stuff, depending on how badly I mis-calculate things like voltage, current and the like. My method is less “Ohms Law” and more “Poke-n-Prod” until the blue smoke comes out. When I see blue smoke it’s generally back to the drawing board. It’s a good way to learn but leads to a lot of dead parts.
I’m sure I could buy the circuit from China for a buck but what’s the fun in that? I have this idea on making an LED string look like it’s pumping electricity like water through a tube. I want to vary the alternating lights at a rate and amplitude I can control. Yea, boring.
Mongrel and I got to walk together some today. When we weren’t moving he was chasing his tail. I can’t tell if he is goofing off like cats can do or if he’s frustrated that he can’t control it. One thing’s for sure is that he is very transparent because of that tail which exposes his current mood. The little biting flies were bugging the crap out of us both too.
We were also still a lot today. It’s interesting to watch Mongrel. He generally sits facing opposite of me. If I were to lay down he sits on top of me. Must be some weird instinct thing going on there. Seems to watch out after me when we are together. Anything out of the ordinary while he is on watch will render a “growl”. Could be a dog ½ mile away or a person riding a horse. He just lets me know it’s out there.
Watching everything that is moving.
When all that is done and we are back in the quiet, cool of the house where his guard comes down he starts to slow down after some dinner. Quietly protesting that he doesn’t want to be inside he climbs in his box next to my desk. He starts off looking at me. Then falls asleep.
“In the safety of my box”
Soon he is on his back with his feet in the air. This cat can sleep like none other I’ve ever met. And will sleep like that all night long.
I hope you’ve had a day that was fun like ours. And that you are back in your safe place where ever that may be.
I’m done goofing off. Work tomorrow. Headed to my box.
