Monthly Archives: September 2010

Move Over, POV.1 — I’ve Got a Hero Now

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Decision made.

The video just blows me away. Here’s a piece of the 1.1 hours of footage I shot today with my GoPro Hero fastened to the front of my helicopter:

This is unedited. I didn’t run it through any filters or stabilizers. All I did was find a 2-minute section of interesting footage, save it as a QuickTime movie, and upload it to YouTube.

I didn’t even have the camera set for full HD.

I didn’t even touch the camera during the flight. I turned it on before I got in and started up and turned it off after I landed and shut down. It saved roughly 4 GB of footage in a normal format easily read by my Mac without QuickTime plugins.

Add to this the incredible hi-res stills (and these, too) I can shoot just as effortlessly and you have a win-win situation for anyone interested in hands-free photography and video.

This completely blows the POV.1 out of the water. I’ll be selling my complete POV.1 camera setup on Craig’s List as soon as I get home. Why mess around with a second-rate extreme video camera system when you can have something so much better for less?

What Scud-Running Looks Like on Google Earth

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My geologger tells the whole story.

Everyone who reads this blog or knows me understands that I am a gadget queen. I have all kinds of little gadgets that I use daily.

My GPS logger, described in some detail here, is one of my multi-purpose gadgets. Although I purchased it primarily to geotag photographs, I also use it when flying to get an exact record of where I’ve been.

I had my GPS logger running for the entire length of my flight from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ last week. As I discovered this morning when I looked at the tracks on Google Earth, it faithfully documented my Pendleton, OR area scud-running attempts.

Scud-running, in case you’re not familiar with the term, is a pilot’s attempt to get around bad weather in order to travel from point A to point B. Normal pilots do not attempt scud running unless they really need to get somewhere — this isn’t something you do on a pleasure flight. It’s also not something a pilot attempts unless he really thinks there’s a way through or around the weather in his path. Scud running is infinitely easier and safer in a helicopter than an airplane. We can make tighter turns and land without an airport when things get really bad. You could argue that scud-running is dumb and I don’t think I’d argue with you very much.

Here’s what my September 9 scud-running attempts look like on Google Earth:

Scud Running near Pendleton

The red line is my arrival in the area the night before. I landed at the Pendleton airport, fueled up, then flew a few more miles to the Bi-Mart parking lot next door to the Red Lion hotel where I spent the night. The Bi-Mart was closed and its parking lot was empty. It made a good LZ that would ensure an early departure the next day.

In the morning, I made my first attempt to get across the mountains. That’s the white line and it tells a pretty good story. I headed southeast, got up into the mountains, and attempted to find a way through. The lower line that comes to a point and doubles back is where I made my first U-turn in a canyon. I followed a canyon back out of the mountains and tried again by heading northeast. Again, I couldn’t get through and had to make a turn in a canyon. The yellow line, by the way, is I-84/Hwy 30; I’m pretty sure parts of the road were in fog. I returned to the airport and started waiting. That attempt took nearly an hour and 13 gallons (1/4 tank) of fuel — obviously, scud running isn’t something you attempt without a lot of fuel on board. (Makes for a bigger fire when you crash, though.)

At noon, I tried again. The blue line indicates my attempt to follow some railroad tracks up into the mountains. I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to make it and doubled back. The post here about my new Hero camera (another gadget) includes video of this attempt shot as a time-lapse.

The green line is where I finally made it and got on course. It was 1:45 PM when I left the airport. I made it as far as North Salt Lake City before dark, dodging rainstorms and clouds a good part of the way.

Scud Running in a HelicopterScud running is dangerous and I don’t do it without full understanding of that danger. Not once did I ever lose sight of the ground or immediate surroundings. When I realized I could not go forward the way I was going, I went back. As you can clearly see by shape of the white line U-turns I made, I was required to turn in two very tight places. These are turns that an airplane could not accomplish, especially since they were made in narrow canyons with no view over the canyon walls. The photo here shows how low the clouds were on that third attempt — the successful one. At several points, I was 200-300 feet below the clouds.

I did a lot of scud running this past summer. That’s probably the nicest part of being back in Arizona: I seldom have to run the scud here.

My Hero

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It’s a camera.

GoPro HeroAbout two weeks ago, I bought a GoPro Hero camera. This is a tiny, durable video camera designed for extreme sports. Real extreme sports. (The darn thing comes in a waterproof housing.) For the past two days, I’ve been testing it out.

I’ve been really dissatisfied lately with the quality of video coming out of my POV.1 camera, which I’ve had for about two and a half years. I wanted something smaller, easier to set up and use, and with better picture quality. The GoPro Hero has the POV.1 beat hands down.

I started playing around with the camera on Tuesday, in the car on the way to Phoenix. I wanted to get an idea of image quality. The Hero offers several resolutions, including true 1080p HD. I shot in a lower quality and was very impressed with the results.

But movies isn’t the only thing the Hero does. It can also be used to shoot individual snapshots, three consecutive snapshots, and snapshots a set number of seconds apart. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I enjoy time-lapse photography — this little camera has the timing built right in.

Yesterday, while stuck in Pendleton, OR waiting for weather to clear, I played around with it a bit more. I decided to try creating a time-lapse. So I set it up before departing the airport on my second attempt to get across the Blue Mountains. In this 38-second video, I travel nine miles from the airport, realize that I’m not going to get over the mountains, turn back, and land on the ramp again.

Salt Lake from the Air

Salt Lake City from the Air

Wahweap Hoodoos

Three shots from my Hero. (1) The last shot it took yesterday, as I was flying over the Great Salt Lake; the reflections of the clouds on the glassy lake surface were amazing. (2) Early this morning as I flew down I-15 near downtown Salt Lake City. (3) A shot from my E-ticket ride past the Wahweap Hoodoos.

Later in the day, I finally got out of there. I’d cleared the camera’s contents and set it up to take a shot every 5 seconds (instead of 2 seconds in the video here). It did this for nearly five hours — the time it took for me to fly from Pendleton to the Salt Lake City area. The battery died about 15 minutes from landing. I compiled the video and liked what I saw. It compresses a 5-hour flight through Oregon, Idaho, and Utah into only four minutes. This morning, I set up the camera again and captured shots for my 2-1/2 hour flight from Salt Lake City to Lake Powell, including a wild, low-level flight down Wahweap Creek past the Wahweap Hoodoos (see photo here). I’ll likely put the two long videos together and get the resulting video online once I’ve had a chance to add notations.

As you can see in these images, the quality of the photos is excellent. There’s great depth of field, making it possible not only to see perfectly out the helicopter’s cockpit windows but to read the instruments. It has no trouble dealing with exposure; it seems to get it right every single time. If I had the time to go through the 5000+ images shot over the past two days, I would find all kinds of neat views. The original images are 2592 × 1944 resolution — that’s better than HD — I just downsized them for this blog post. And with one shot every 5 seconds, the camera battery died before it filled the 16 GB SD card I bought for the camera.

What’s kind of unusual is the way I mounted the camera for these shots. I hung it upside down using a suction cup mount on the passenger side ceiling window. (You can see the front of the window in each shot; I hung the camera from the back side.) Because the camera has a very wide angle lens, there’s some distortion to the view. I think that just adds to the funkiness of the photo. The camera is smart enough to turn the image right side up when processing, so there’s no need to worry about upside down video if you’re shooting video.

As for video…if I can figure out a way to mount it in a good spot, I should be able to get some really fine video while flying. That’s the challenge. Believe me — if I succeed, you’ll see the results here.

The Long Drive with the Long Trailer

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I move my mobile mansion from Wenatchee to Lake Powell.

I’ve been traveling for the past week or so, starting in Wenatchee Heights, WA and ending in Phoenix, AZ.

Day 1I left Wenatchee Heights with my 5th wheel RV hooked up behind my husband’s Chevy pickup. The first day’s drive was relatively short: from Wenatchee Heights to Walla Walla, a distance of only 190 miles. Only a small portion of the drive was on a freeway (I-90); the rest was on back roads through farmland.

It rained for part of the drive, but never enough to make the road slick. I took my time. The trailer weighs in at 15,000 pounds and although it tows well, I can never really forget that it’s back there.

At Walla WallaIn Walla Walla, I stayed at the Blue Valley RV Park. It was a relatively pleasant place, with average sized RV spots, full hookups, picnic tables and grass. The trees were too young to give shade, but I bet they’ll be nice in about 5 years. The main building had a pool table, laundry room, and restrooms. Everything was clean and the place was quiet. I got some laundry done, wrote an article for AircraftOwner Online, and relaxed.

I had dinner at two excellent local restaurants: T. Maccarone’s and Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen. It was nice to have a change of scenery. I was there for four nights. The wine with my dinner at T.Maccarone’s is what sent me to Dusted Valley Winery for a tasting, where I bought four bottles of wine.

Day 2 of the DriveOn Friday night, I got the trailer hooked up again and mostly ready to go. I needed to be on the road early for the next leg of my trip: from Walla Walla, WA to Draper, UT (south of Salt Lake City), a distance of 606 miles. I was on the road not long after dawn. The route took me south almost to Pendleton, OR, then onto I-84 through Oregon and Idaho and down into Utah, where I picked up I-15. The landscape started with farmland, then mountains, then more flat farmland, then more mountains, and then finally into the Salt Lake basin. I’d driven the route before with my underpowered Ford F150 pickup towing my old 22-foot Starcraft. It wasn’t fun then; Saturday’s drive was much more tolerable. I stopped three times for fuel and twice for food. It was very unlike me to make so many stops; I usually try to get food and fuel on the same stop, but the situation made that tough. I rolled into Draper, UT’s Camping World parking lot at 6:15 PM local time, just 15 minutes after the store closed. I’d called the week before and knew I could park out back, so I did. I even got to hook up 50 amp power.

Ann TorrenceOn Sunday, @AnnTorrence picked me up for a drive to Ft. Bridger, WY. There was a Mountain Man Rendezvous there with hundreds of people in period clothes set up with period campsites. The “period” was apparently mid 1800s. Ann was there to take photos and research a possibly future book project. I was there to take pictures and look around and have a day off from driving. I didn’t take a single photo, although I carried my camera bag around all day. Well, that’s not true. I did use my BlackBerry to take this shot of Ann. She, in turn, used her iPhone to take a shot of me with my only purchase: a genuine raccoon skin, which I hope to turn into a hat.

After a very pleasant lunch at Cafe Trio in Salt Lake City with Ann and her husband, Robert, I went back to their house to relax on the front porch. @BWJones showed up and I finally got to meet him in person. After a tour of the garden, Ann and Robert returned me to Draper for the evening. Again, Camping World had just closed for the day. No one had left any notes on the RV or truck (which was still attached) and the power was still connected. Alex the Bird entertained us for a while.

Day 3Monday — Labor Day — was my last drive day. I drove from Draper, UT to Page, AZ, a distance of 370 miles. I got a very early start, pulling out of the parking lot at 6:30 AM local time. By the time I stopped for fuel two hours later, I’d already gone more than 100 miles. (I parked with the big rig trucks and discovered that my rig was about as long as theirs.) This part of the drive was mostly on I-15, but started east on route 20 to Highway 89, which took us all the way to Page. The roads were mountainous and there was a lot of climbing and descending. There were also a lot more vehicles on the road, making driving a bit more of a chore.

Thunderbird RestaurantThe only food stop I made along the way was at the Thunderbird Restaurant at Mount Carmel Junction. The place is a bit of a tourist trap, but it does have good “ho-made” pies (whatever that means). Odd thing happened when I tried to leave. They couldn’t give me a bill because the computer was down. Apparently no one knows how to do basic math. All I had was a piece of pie with ice cream and an iced tea. They apparently expected me to wait until the computers came back online. With Alex the Bird in the front seat of the car, that was not an option. Finally, my waitress disappeared into the kitchen where she may have used her “lifeline” to get help with this difficult math problem. The verdict was $7.79. I was afraid to count my change.

I arrived at the Lake Powell Resort just west of Page, AZ at around 11:30 local time. I’d been on the road for 7 hours.

Mike and PlaneMy husband, who’d flown up in his plane and spent a few hours swimming in the lake, met me at the lodge restaurant for lunch. Afterwards, we put fuel in the truck and parked it (temporarily) at Page Municipal Airport. I gathered my belongings — forgetting only two things, one of which was vital — and we loaded into Mike’s plane. Then we started the long (90 minutes), hot (90°F+), and bumpy (I almost got sick) flight to Wickenburg. The only sights of interest along the way — keeping in mind that I make that flight about 1000 feet lower at least a dozen times a year — were a handful of forest fires east of our Howard Mesa place and a heavy rain shower coming out of a remarkably small cloud near Granite Mountain.

Back in Wickenburg, we put the plane away and went straight home. Hot and sweaty, it was good to take a shower in a real bathroom.

I was asleep by 8:30 PM.

How the U.S. Can Balance the Budget and Reduce Unemployment

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The answer is simple.

In their never-ending search for ways to cut costs, U.S. businesses have turned to outsourcing to offshore companies to reduce labor costs. As a result, more and more jobs are being shipped overseas and more and more customer/technical service phones are being answered in by comparatively low-paid labor forces in India and other Asian countries. The U.S. workers who had these jobs are given pink slips and sent on their way. Jobless, they can no longer afford anything beyond the essentials, thus reducing the demand for products and services their former employers offered.

This, I believe, is the irony of outsourcing.

The U.S. government can help balance the budget and create new jobs easily. Just levy a tax on every job sent overseas. Fire 10 people in New York and replace them with 15 people in India? Well, that’ll cost you $5,000 per person or $50,000 a year. Or maybe it should work based on a hefty percentage of the salary no longer paid. 25%? Replace a $50K employee with an Indian? That’ll cost you $12,500. Do that with 100 employees? Write that check for $1,250,000. So not only will you alienate your customers by supporting them with foreigners reading off scripts, but you won’t save all that much money in the process.

After all, extended unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and other benefits for unemployed people should be paid by the people who caused the unemployment, no?

Think of all the tax money the country is losing by not having these U.S. employees. Think of all the Social Security tax money not being paid — that alone is 15% of a person’s income (up to certain limits, of course). By greedy companies sending jobs overseas, they’re screwing our country out of important tax revenues we’ll need to maintain our standard of living — and get retirement benefits under Social Security and Medicare. Why are companies being allowed to do this?

And while they’re at it, why not levy higher tariffs on imports? The other day, I bought a perfectly good, 100% cotton polo shirt at a Walmart for $8. The only reason it was so cheap is because it was made in Pakistan. Meanwhile, towns across the United States are slipping into local depressions because fabric mills and clothing factories are closing down. People are losing jobs they’ve held for their entire adult lives. Why? Because companies can have these things made cheaper in China or Taiwan or Pakistan. Do they do.

Don’t you see it? Our drive to buy the cheapest of everything is causing people to lose jobs, This, in turn, is fueling this recession and requiring more and more of our tax dollars to help support the people who can’t get work.

Our greed and cheapness is screwing up our economy.

Why not make these companies pay for it? Yes, it’ll trickle down to us, but in the long term, wouldn’t you rather have a strong economy than a cheap polo shirt?