Author Archives: Maria Langer

One American’s View of the Situation in Iran

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Wait and see.

I should start out by saying that I’m not a political activist or analyst. I’m just a relatively well-educated and thoughtful American citizen.

I’ve been following what’s going on in Iran more closely than most Americans. I’m stuck in a 22-foot travel trailer in a golf course RV park in Quincy, WA. I don’t have a television, but I do have a radio tuned in to NPR (National Public Radio, for those of you who don’t know) and Internet access. I spent a good — probably unhealthy — portion of the past three days listening to news and analysis from NPR and reading Web content linked to from Twitter, as well as on blogs by Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times. My few attempts to find “real” news on MSNBC and CNN Web sites failed miserably; more on that in a moment.

While I’m not ready to believe everything I read on the Web, it’s quite clear that the Iranian people are in some kind of revolutionary mode. While I side with the young people protesting against what appears to be an ultra-conservative dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, I cannot assume that the majority of Iranians feel as these young people do. None of us can.

Andrew Sullivan summarized yesterday’s activity in his post, “What Happened Today?“:

What’s going on in Iran is very hard to understand from the distance we are at. And interpretations of the dizzying events of the last few weeks have varied widely – and still do. In fact, it’s hard to remember an event like this on which there is still such a debate. Some today have argued that Ahmadinejad won and that what we are seeing is some sore losers. Others have seen this as a turning point in the history of Iran. Others still think it may be somewhere in between. And the truth is: we do not know. At this point in time, I do not know. We may be misjudging this, over-reading it, misunderstanding it. All we can do is assemble as many facts and test as many theses as possible in real time.

It is not the job of the United States to step in and take sides on this matter. Rather, we should be part of a concerned global community making objective conclusions based on observations.

President Obama is taking a wait and see approach. His comments yesterday (embedded here) made it clear that he has no intention of stepping in.

Obama is a smart man and I think he’s doing the right thing. The United States is too often seen as an imperialistic power. We’ve messed around in Iran’s politics before — remember the Shah of Iran and how that ended up? We have no right messing around in the politics of other sovereign nations, applying our views and values to their people. We have enough trouble here in the U.S., with crises in health care, education, and the economy. We’re already practically bankrupt from money poured into unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think it’s far more important for the global community, as a team, to see the extent of any election wrongdoing in Iran before they step forward with any assistance for the wronged. I think it’s more important to side with the legitimate leader of Iran — even if it’s Ahmadinejad — than to help the Iranian people with a new revolution that might or might not benefit us in the future.

When will we learn? The Muslim world simply does not like us. Let’s not become guilty of the meddling they so often accuse us of.

I realize that this is an unpopular point of view. I’ve read reactions to Obama’s comments on The Daily Dish and most folks — including Andrew Sullivan, its author — seem to think we should seize the moment to help the Iranian people in their efforts to “become free.” But I believe that Noah Millman has the right idea in his post on The American Scene titled “How Do You Say “Tiananmen Square” In Farsi?“:

If the regime survives by brute force, it will be revealed to be relatively weak in terms of popular support and will be less credible globally than it was before. If the regime simply waits the protests out, then very little will have changed at all. If the regime survives by abandoning Ahmadinejad, then it will be focused on maintaining its credibility internally, and Mousavi will not be in a position to go off the reservation much if at all €“ so negotiations with America, if they happen will not really go anywhere. If the regime does not survive, it will be because the military turns on it decisively (which I would be really surprised by), and whatever regime emerges to replace it will have to establish its own credibility as a patriotic guardian of the Iranian people. That means no dramatic rapprochement with America, whatever happens behind the scenes.

All of which means that America should be playing it pretty cool right now. There are states that could plausibly bring pressure to bear in support of proper democratic procedures and against stealing elections or shooting protestors, but they would have to be states with real credibility both as democracies and as friends of Iran €“ i.e., places like Germany or India, not us. But it’s not obvious to me why Germans or Indians would want to interfere like that. We, unfortunately, can’t do much more than watch.

Now, about the mainstream media (MSM). While I realize that I must take anything written in a blog or on Twitter with a grain of salt, there is a huge disparity between what’s being reported on respected weblogs (like the ones listed above) and the MSM. I also find differences in what I read on US MSM sites and other countries’ MSM sites, such as BBC’s. I find this horrifying. Who do we believe?

But that’s really just fodder for another post.

Sometimes It’s Too Easy to Get a Good Shot

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Maybe I shouldn’t try so hard.

The other afternoon, I drove down to Quincy Lakes with my Nikon D80 camera, 70-300 mm VR lens, and monopod. It was a scouting expedition for me. I’d spent a lot of time down at Quincy Lakes in the summer of 2008, photographing birds. This was my first visit in 2009. Although I brought my camera along, I wasn’t really expecting to take many photos. I was more interested in finding “good spots” to set up a tripod for some serious photography.

Of course, once I got down there and saw the incredible variety of colorful birds, I couldn’t stop myself from shooting away. I’d park the truck and hike a bit of a distance away from it, plant the foot of my monopod in the dirt, and target a bird. Most of the red-winged blackbirds and yellow-headed blackbirds I saw, however, were clinging to tall reeds, with other tall reeds blocking my view. I shot a lot of photos, but knew that only a small percentage of them would be any good. I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to do any better with a tripod.

After about 90 minutes and eight or so stops and short hikes, I was tired and ready to go back and review what I’d shot. But I detoured down a road to check out the camping area. If Mike comes up to Washington to join me later in the season, we might pull the trailer over there for a few days of camping on a lake.

I was just driving away from the parking area when I spotted a yellow-headed blackbird clinging to some reeds on the side of the road. The bird was less than 15 feet away from the roadside. I pulled up abeam him as quietly as I could in a diesel pickup truck and pressed the brake to stop. For a moment, I just looked at the bird and he looked at me. My camera was still attached to my monopod; its leg was almost fully extended. If I opened the door to step out or swung the leg around outside my window, the bird would surely fly off. In fact, I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t already flown off.

Yellow-Headed Blackbird

Yes, I shot this photo from the window of my truck.

With my foot still on the brake and the truck stopped squarely in the middle of the narrow dirt road, I reached over and began to unscrew the camera from the monopod’s very basic swivel head. Every once in a while, I’d glance back at the bird. He remained in place. I finally got the camera free, zoomed it to 300 mm, and focused. I squeezed off about a dozen shots before the bird flew off.

This is the best one. It is not cropped.

I don’t know about you, but I find this incredibly ironic. We gear up and go out with multiple lenses and filters and tripods. We hike away from roads and vehicles and people. We bushwhack off trails and wade into streams.

And yet it’s possible to take a photo as nice as this without leaving the vehicle.

Hell, I think I even had the stereo on.

It pays to cruise around with the windows rolled down, I guess.

Why I Wear a Flight Suit to Dry Cherries

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Just a precaution.

In a comment to yesterday’s post about my work drying cherries, Miraz asked:

Could you write a post about your Nomex flight suit. What is it? What’s special about it? Why don’t you just wear whatever you normally wear when flying?

A good topic for a post, so here it is.

First, Nomex. Wikipedia describes Nomex as follows:

Nomex (styled NOMEX) is a registered trademark for flame resistant meta-aramid material developed in the early 1960s by DuPont and first marketed in 1967.

It can be considered an aromatic nylon, the meta variant of the para-aramid Kevlar. It is sold in both fiber and sheet forms and is used as a fabric wherever resistance from heat and flame is required […] Both the firefighting and vehicle racing industries use Nomex to create clothing and equipment that can withstand intense heat. All aramids are heat and flame resistant but Kevlar, having a para orientation, can be molecularly aligned and gives high strength….

The Wikipedia piece goes on to list the different uses of Nomex fabric, including this statement:

Military pilots and aircrew wear flight suits made of over 92 percent Nomex to protect them from the possibility of cockpit fires and other mishaps.

A Pickle Suit

Here’s an example of a flight suit available on Flightsuits.com. (And no, it doesn’t come with the guy.)

It’s not just military pilots. Nomex is also widely used in flight suits worn by EMS pilots and crew members and law enforcement pilots.

A flight suit is usually a one-piece, zip up garment, often with many pockets, that is worn by pilots and aircraft crew members. While they come in many colors and styles, they’re usually a military green or khaki color. The green suits (see photo) are sometimes referred to by the folks who wear them as “pickle suits.”

Flight suits can be made of any fabric, but since they’re available in Nomex, it seems silly to wear one that doesn’t offer the additional protection of the Nomex fabric. And although they come in long sleeve and short sleeve styles, it also seems silly to have Nomex protection on only half of your arms when you can get full arm coverage.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Why does a pilot need protection at all? Well, it’s mostly to save your life (or even just your skin) in the event of a post-crash fire. And fires are definitely possible when you’re carrying fuel (which you should be) if you hit the ground hard in a crash.

Safety Notice 40Robinson Helicopter Company recommends that all pilots — and even passengers! — wear flight suits. Safety Notice 40 was released in July 2006, possibly in response to an accident with a post-crash fire in Texas. Robinson often releases Safety Notices in response to what it sees as dangerous or potentially dangerous situations. Safety Notices are not requirements; they’re suggestions. They’re also Robinson’s way of “covering its butt.” The company is owned by Frank Robinson and is self-insured. By recommending that we wear flight suits, Robinson Helicopter cannot be held accountable for burn injuries if we’re not following their recommendation.

That’s not to say it isn’t good advice. It is. But it isn’t exactly practical to require every person on board a flight to wear a flight suit. And while I might be tempted to wear a flight suit more often if I actually looked good in one, I don’t. Besides, I’ve decided on a more professional “corporate pilot” appearance for my charter flights: slacks with a polo shirt or pilot shirt.

It’s a matter of risk assessment. Tour and charter flying has much lower risk associated with it. I’m usually operating at airports, landing and departing from locations very suitable for that kind of activity. Flight profiles remain outside the “deadman’s curve.” There isn’t anything unusually risky about these flights. Even most of my photo and survey flights are relatively low-risk.

But hovering 5-10 feet over cherry trees at 5-10 knots ground speed puts me firmly into the deadman’s curve. If I have an engine failure, there’s nothing I can do to prevent a messy crash into the trees. With lots of fuel on board, a post-crash fire is possible. Wearing a Nomex flight suit seems like a pretty good idea.

Helicopter Helmet

A helicopter helmet like the one I wear. This is a low-cost model available from AviationHelmets.com.

So does wearing a helmet. I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read in helicopter flying magazines about the importance of wearing a helmet on high-risk missions. The main thing that worries me is the flinging parts that might just enter the cockpit in the event of a crash. It would be awful to have a soft landing only to have a main rotor blade enter the cockpit and split your head open like a coconut. (Ick. What a terrible visual.) Or even to just clock your head on the door frame hard enough to cause serious damage. The helmet protects me against this.

But I don’t think my passengers would feel very comfortable if I wore it on a charter flight.

So, in answer to Miraz’s question, I wear a flight suit for cherry drying because of the increased risks associated with that kind of flying. I don’t wear it for other, less risky missions because I’m trying to maintain a “corporate pilot” professional look for my passengers. And I look like a big khaki sausage in my flight suit.

Fortunately, the cherry trees — and growers — don’t care what I look like.

Quincy Clouds Time-lapse Movies

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I draft my old G5 for time-lapse duty.

About two weeks ago, I got the bright idea that it was a complete waste of valuable camera resources to use my Nikon D80 for time-lapse photography when I had an older camera I could use. The other camera is my Canon PowerShot G5, which I bought back in 2003 for aerial photography work.

Buying the camera was a huge deal back then. Digital SLRs, if available back then, were too expensive to be an option. The G5 offered 5.0 megapixel (!) resolution — more than twice the resolution of any other digital camera we had. But it also included features we needed, including manual setting for focus and exposure.

Canon PowerShot G5Looking at the camera today, it’s amazingly big and clunky. But it takes a decent picture — certainly good enough for my time-lapse experiments. And frankly, I was having trouble getting my mind around leaving my Nikon outdoors, unattended, for hours at a time. It could be because the tripod got knocked over once and it was sheer luck that it fell toward a rail that caught it rather than toward the empty concrete behind it. I had no love for the G5; if it broke, well, that’s the way it goes. Ditto if it got stolen. In fact, I’d be more upset about losing my tripod or Pclix than the G5.

Oddly enough, the G5 has a built-in intervalometer — a fact I was unaware of. Unfortunately, the interval must be set in minutes (1 to 60) and it can only take 100 shots at a time. This simply wasn’t going to cut it for my needs. Besides, for some reason I still can’t understand, I can’t get the damn thing to work.

So I bought an optical cable for my Pclix. It arrived right before I left for Washington. I tried it for the first time on Friday.

For the optical cable to work, its end must be taped to the camera. The Pclix maker recommends electrical tape, so that’s what I used. Unfortunately, the heat of the day softened the tape. After about 2-1/2 hours, it shifted out of position. The camera stopped taking pictures. Here’s the result, with most of the beginning edited out (since there was really nothing going on):

Disappointing in so many ways. The sky was just getting interesting when the setup failed. And let’s face it — the view of the golf cart shed isn’t all that enticing.

So I tried again yesterday after recharging the camera’s battery overnight. I fixed up the camera differently and pointed it north instead of west. Same settings: one shot every minute, compiled into a movie at 10 frames per second. To prevent the camera battery from running out, I turned off the camera’s video screen. First shot at 9:13 AM; last shot at 7:33 PM. I left the camera outside all day long — even while I was out doing a helicopter ride. I never would have done that with my Nikon.

The result isn’t bad at all. I’m a little POed at myself for including the wires in the shot and it’s a little weird that some of the larger vehicles that drove by appeared in some shots — like the hay truck near the beginning! Again, I think I could have done better. But the clouds are so awesome in this movie. They build and move and swirl around. So cool. See for yourself:

I’ll keep working on this. Hopefully, I’ll get it right soon.