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.
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.
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:
Sunrise October 17, 2017
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.
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.
Today it will rain most, if not all, of the day. We are thrilled:
“I … will … wait … right …. here …..”
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.
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.
