Tag Archives: California

Gyro Flight

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A friend takes me for a ride in his open cockpit gyroplane.

An Angry Bird
Now this is an angry bird!

One of the great thing about living at an airport is that you’re exposed to neat aviation things on a daily basis. And what isn’t neat about an open cockpit gyroplane sporting a custom Angry Birds paint scheme?

My friend George owns this one. He was at the airport most of this week, teaching a friend how to fly it. Well, he was trying to. The wind howled pretty fiercely on Tuesday and much of Wednesday morning.

George and his Gyro
George posing with his gyro.

(This is a gyroplane or autogyro, by the way. Gyrocopter refers to the Bensen Gyrocopter manufactured by Bensen Aircraft.)

On Wednesday afternoon, George took me for a ride — despite winds 14 gusting to 20. It was an interesting experience for me.

With George
Strapped in and ready to go.

Like helicopters, gyroplanes have a mast and main rotor blades. But unlike a helicopter, a gyro has a means of propulsion — normally a pusher engine/prop. To fly a gyro, you use a pre-rotator to get the blades spinning. You then use the engine/prop to move forward on a runway or other suitable surface. At the right speed, the pilot pulls back on the stick like he would in an airplane to take off. Lift is generated by the rotor blades, which remain spinning in a mode very similar to an autorotation in a helicopter. The engine does not directly drive the rotor blades; the pre-rotator is disconnected before takeoff roll.

Low and Slow
Low and slow in an open cockpit plane? What could be better?

We were airborne for about 20-30 minutes. George demonstrated low flight along a creek bed, high flight, and a power-off landing that had us descending backwards in the stiff wind. (He had to dive to make the runway.) He demonstrated several very short landings and takeoffs. We flew low much of the time and waved at people on the ground waving up at us.

Side View
It’s a great feeling to have nothing between you and the ground you’re flying over.

I thoroughly enjoyed the flight. It reminded me a bit of the powered parachute ride I had a few years ago back in Washington — the closest thing to flying like a bird.

George is a CFI and I’m tempted to take a few lessons. It would be fun to better get to know this kind of aircraft. But there’s no gyroplane in my future — at least I don’t think there is — so getting a gyro rating would probably not be worthwhile.

Still, you never know…

The Peacocks of Lake Solano Campground

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A campground drive through turns into an amazing photo opportunity.

There are a few weird little things I like to do. (Actually, there are probably enough weird little things to fill a book, but we won’t go there now.) One of them is driving through public campgrounds to check out the facilities.

I don’t remember when I started doing this. It might have been way back when I first started doing road trips with my wasband in the 1980s. Or it might have been in 1995, when I began doing road trips on my own. In any case, when I’m on the road just wandering around and don’t have anyplace special to go and I see a state or county park campground that looks interesting, I detour to drive through it.

I’ve seen a lot of really neat places to go car camping this way. A lot.

Lake Solano, west of Winters, CA, was just a point on the map when I went out for a drive to Lake Berryessa midday yesterday. The satellite view on Google Maps didn’t show it to be anything special. But when I drove by it on my way up route 128 into the mountains, I noticed its calm, clear water stretching alongside the road. And after a 9-mile kayak paddle the day before that had left me very sore indeed, the calm water of the little lake looked extremely inviting for a paddle one day in the future. So on the way back, I drove slowly past the lake. And that’s when I noticed the sign for the campground.

A campground near a lake. Of course, I had to check it out.

It’s a nice campground with plenty of wooded site. I didn’t really notice whether water and electricity were available. The reason for that was the initial distraction of seeing what looked like a small person carrying some sort of netted frame along the road ahead of me. My brain asked, “What the hell is that?” I looked harder and soon realized I was seeing the side of a peacock with his fan of feathers fully extended. It was the fan that looked like a frame with a net.

I pulled over on the side of the road and grabbed my camera. I’d brought my Nikon D7000 with me, hoping to see something photographic at Lake Berryessa. (I’d been disappointed.) The bird was standing in the middle of the road, rotating slowly so all the females in the area could see him. When he faced me, I snapped a photo with the 24-70mm “everyday” lens that I keep on the camera.

Peacock

Surrounded by PeacocksAnd that’s when I realized that we were pretty much surrounded by peacocks and peahens. They were strutting through the empty campsites, along the road, and into the brush. Occasionally, one would let out a shrill call. Penny stared at them through her window. I used my phone to grab a photo of that.

I spent the next twenty minutes driving around the campground, snapping photos out the truck window of the peacocks and peahens. When I realized after a few minutes that I wasn’t scaring them off, I took a moment to put my 70-300mm stabilized lens on the camera. Then I kept shooting. Yes, every single one of the shots on this page was taken from inside a running diesel pickup truck.

Peacock

Peacock

Peacock

Peahens

Peacock

Peacock

I did get a chance to check out the boat launch, which was perfect for canoes, kayaks, and other non-motorized boats. And I looked at a bunch of campsites, trying to judge whether my mobile mansion would fit into any of them.

But mostly I looked at the peacocks. I never realized just how beautiful these birds are.

Bees: Post-Winter Results

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One out of three isn’t bad.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

If you’ve been following my blog, you may know that I brought my bees to California with me. After all, I’ll be here for about two months and it’s a heck of a lot warmer here than back home. Knowing that one of my three hives was already dead, I hoped to save the other two and get them an early start on the season.

When I set them up here in California, I discovered that although one hive — last year’s swarm capture — was very strong, the other hive was very weak. So weak, in fact, that when I opened it up a week later to check on it, the bees were gone. Bees from the healthy hive were robbing honey from the dead one.

So I was one for three. With an expected survival rate of 50%, I was batting below average. Disappointing.

The surviving hive, however, was doing amazingly well. I saw that today when I opened the hive and inspected all of the frames. Although I couldn’t spot the queen, there’s plenty of brood in all stages of development in the middle of the hive. As I searched for the queen, I even saw several baby bees emerging from cells. One side of the drone frame is also almost full of capped drone cells. And the rest of the hive’s nine frames are completely built out with lots of stored honey.

Bees

Bees

Bees

I looked for signs that the bees might be planning to swarm, but there were none. I considered doing a hive split, but since I was unable to find the queen and I couldn’t actually see eggs in cells — I really need to either start using black foundation or wearing glasses during inspections — I decided not to risk it. At the rate at which the hive is growing, I expect the bees to start feeling crowded soon. I’ll check it next Friday — when I’ll pull the drone frame and pop it in the freezer — and if there are any swarm cells at all, I’ll split the hive.

One of the problems I had with the hive was its bottom. A friend of mine had made me some screened bottoms for about half the price I’d pay at Mann Lake, my favorite supplier. Unfortunately, he’d used 1/4 inch mesh rather than 1/8 inch mesh. Since the bees could get through 1/4 inch mesh, they’d basically begun using the bottom back of the hive as another exit. I didn’t think this was a good idea. The dead hive had 1/8 inch mesh. So I disassembled that hive, and put the live hive on top of that bottom. I then repositioned it so it was in the same place. I didn’t want to confuse the bees.

Beehive
My surviving hive with queen excluder and spacer beneath honey super. The yellow-orange stuff in front of it is the burr comb I scraped off the honey frames. The bees will clean off the honey and then I’ll collect the wax and melt it down.

With the inspection done and the bottom changed, I put a queen excluder on top of the bottom hive box. That’ll keep the queen in the bottom but allow the workers to come upstairs. I then added a spacer with an entrance. I put the medium hive box on top of that. The box had been full of medium frames but, for some reason, the bees didn’t want to build out comb on the frames. Instead, they were building burr comb on the bottom of the frames.

When I brought the helicopter down to California last week, I brought down some other medium beehive frames I had, including a bunch that already had comb built out. I figured I’d swap in those frames. Maybe the bees would get the hint.

I topped off the box with the screen inner cover that’s always been on that hive and the outer telescoping cover.

I wanted to stop the bees from robbing the other hive, so I packed the other hive into the back of my truck. Later, I’d pack up the spare hive bottoms with their frames in black plastic garbage bags. It was the only way I could think of to keep the bees and ants out.

At this point, I have one very healthy hive that I’ll likely be able to split next week. I also have enough hive parts to build a total of three hives, two of which would have two boxes. And of course, Mann Lake is right in town if I need more parts.

I’m still hoping to find a swarm.

In the meantime, a local beekeeper has 176 hives for sale at a very good price. I’m hoping to buy a few before I head home in April.

California Strawberries

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Sweet, with bittersweet memories.

StrawberriesThis morning, as I cut up some fresh, ripe California strawberries for breakfast, I found myself thinking back to April days in the late 1980s.

Back then, I worked as an Internal Auditor for ADP. Each spring, in April, they’d send a team of us — usually 3 or 4 auditors — out to their La Palma, CA location. In those days, I lived in New Jersey with the man I’d later marry and a three-week trip to California at the tail end of winter was like a gift from heaven.

They put us up in the Embassy Suites (now a Radisson Suites) up the road from Knotts Berry Farm, each in our own suite. (Back in those days, a “suite” was really two rooms.) Great breakfast every day, happy hour every evening. We really got to know the staff and used to party with them once in a while. There was one rental car for each pair of us, so ground transportation was not a problem. 9 to 5 at the office a few miles away, then on our own with expense accounts for R&R in the evenings.

There was a set of high tension power lines running alongside the hotel’s property. And there, under the power lines, they farmed strawberries.

That’s not the only place, of course, Fresh local strawberries were all over southern California in April. Strawberry shortcake in every restaurant. I especially remember a place near Disneyland in Anaheim. My brain keeps telling me it was called Carroll’s, but I can’t find it in Google. We joked that it was Paul Bunyan‘s restaurant — the portions were enormous. Even the flatware was huge — a soup spoon could not fit in my mouth. The strawberry shortcake there could feed a whole table of people.

On weekends, we had the option of sticking around or using our hotel allowance to pay for lodging elsewhere. One year, I met up with fellow auditors working in the San Francisco area for a trip to Lake Tahoe where they skied and I sipped spiked hot cocoa. Another year, we went to La Jolla and stayed in a hotel on the coast with a trip into Tijuana.

The trips to California were three weeks long and we were given a choice: fly home one of the two weekends or have someone from home fly out to California. Each year, my future wasband would fly out on the second weekend. (That was back in the days when he preferred to spend his vacation time with me rather than with his mother.) We’d do something fun together over the weekend and then he’d spend the week goofing off while we worked, taking the rental car to explore the area. He saw the Spruce Goose and Queen Mary, drove up the coast, and did all kinds of things during his free vacation. At 5 PM, he’d be back in the parking lot with the rental car to pick us up.

When the job was over, I’d take my vacation, tacking a week on to the end of the trip. One year, we drove out to Death Valley and Las Vegas. Another year, we explored Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks. We’d car camp — he’d bring our camping gear with him in a big duffle bag — and explore. They were some of the best vacations I had, visiting beautiful places with the man I loved, back when he seemed more interested in the beauty of the world around us and having fun than buying expensive cars and other assets he didn’t need and couldn’t afford. Best of all, the trips were remarkably affordable with the airfare for both of us covered by my employer.

When I moved out of my Wickenburg home last year, I left behind the photos I took on those trips. They’re in photo albums of prints painstakingly laid out afterwards to share with family and friends. I wanted to forget that part of my life and the man, now dead, who I shared it with. But too many memories survive, even without the photos.

And they can be triggered by something as simple as the look, smell, and taste of fresh, ripe strawberries from California.

My Traveling Bees

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If spring won’t come to the bees, the bees will go to spring.

I was very surprised, about a month ago, when a fellow helicopter operator offered me a 6-week (minimum) frost control contract in the Sacramento area. I’ll explain what frost control is in another post; for now, just understand that it required me to relocate with my helicopter to California for at least the 6 weeks of the contract.

Winter in Washington had been mild, with seasonal daytime temperatures around freezing but very little snow. All that changed about two weeks ago when the temperature dropped and then the snow started falling. Not a lot of snow, but enough to make it actually feel like winter for the first time. It was my first real winter since leaving New Jersey in 1996 or 1997 and although I didn’t exactly mind the cold weather, I was ready for spring. So I was very pleased to be offered an early escape from winter that would bring me back home in time for the local spring.

My bees, of course, were all set up for winter. I’d lost one of the three hives and wasn’t sure how the other two were doing. The cold weather was keeping them inside their hives where they’d cluster together around the queen to keep her and themselves warm. It wasn’t a good idea to open up the hives for a good look when it was cold out. I’d already had a peek in late January and had a good enough idea of the situation.

The Crazy Idea

Sometime in the last week before moving my RV out of Washington, I got this crazy idea: it was warm in California and the entire area would be full of blooming almond trees and then walnut trees. If I brought my bees with me, they could skip the last two months of winter and get an early start on spring. I might even be able to get a good start on honey production and do a hive split. And of course, with so many bees in the area for almond pollination, there was even a chance I’d be able to capture a swarm or two.

But could I bring my bees? While it’s true I was driving a full bed pickup truck, I was also pulling a fifth wheel RV. But that fifth wheel had a gooseneck hitch on it, greatly reducing the amount of space the hitch needed in the bed. Could I fit the hives in the pickup bed and still tow the trailer?

The two hives were set up differently. One, the weaker of the two hives, was a single deep hive body with a frame feeder in it to supplement the frames of honey. The other was a deep hive body with a medium body on top; that contained a top feeder. But I didn’t need that top box or feeder for the trip south. I could make that a single deep box high, too. That would fit in the truck bed beneath the fifth wheel.

In all honesty, it wasn’t until the day before I pulled out that I made the decision to give it a try. Even then, I decided that if I couldn’t get it to work out, I’d leave them behind. But late Wednesday morning, I was up at my property with the pickup parked in eight inches of relatively fresh snow near the hive shelter I’d built the previous autumn. And as the temperatures climbed into the high 30s, I was unwrapping the winter insulation from the hives, reconfiguring the taller hive, strapping the hive boxes between their covers and bases, and stuffing rags into the hive entrances. Then I lifted them into the back of the truck. I put the dead hive in there, too; I’d need its components for a hive split or swarm capture and may as well bring it along.

The Drive South

By 12:30 PM — a half hour after my planned departure time, I was at the airport where I’d parked my RV before the snow had come. (Good think I did!) It was all packed and ready to go. I just needed to hook it up to the truck.

When I backed into position, however, I realized that there were bees flying around the back of the truck. On closer inspection, I discovered that they were escaping through the bottom of the hive. You see, I’d replaced the solid hive bottoms with screened bottoms for mite control. While the weaker of the two hives had a Mann Lake screened hive bottom, the other one had a hive bottom made by a friend of mine. He’d used 1/4 inch mesh. As I pointed out to him, he really needed to use 1/8 inch mesh — the bees could squeeze through the larger openings. And indeed, that’s what they were doing. Some of them were coming out for cleansing flights. This would be a problem.

I went into my hangar and found some cardboard. I stuffed it under the hives. Then, for good measure, I stuffed an old saddle blanket I keep in the truck under the hive the bees were coming out of. That would have to do.

Day One
I covered 287 miles the first day of driving.

I hooked up the RV, did my walk around, climbed into the truck, and started off. It was 1 PM and I was hoping to cover about 450 miles that day all the way to a casino near Klamath Falls, OR.

The drive was long but pleasant, with lots of sun and scenery. I drove through Quincy and got on I-90 at George. Then onto Route 97 near Ellensburg. South through Yakima. Cross the Columbia River at Maryhill State Park. Diesel on the Oregon side. Then mile after miles of rolling Oregon farm and ranch land.

It got dark along the way. I don’t like driving in the dark. Weird shit happens.

I changed my destination from Klamath Falls to Bend and then to whatever outpost of civilization I could spend the night in.

I wound up in Madras, parked overnight at a Les Schwab tire dealer parking lot, with a coffee stand on one side of me and a Subway restaurant across the street. I’d driven 287 miles.

I checked the bees before going in for the night. The hives had shifted around a bit, but there were no bees outside the hive. That didn’t surprise me. It was too cold for them to want to come out.

Icy rain fell during the night. In the morning, on my way to the coffee stand at 6:15 AM, I nearly slipped on the ice that had formed in the parking lot.

No sign of life among the bees. But I honestly didn’t expect them to be out and about with temperatures around freezing.

Day Two
I covered 461 miles on the second day of my trip.

I waited until 7:30 before continuing on my way. (Related: Subway, which opens at 7 AM, sells breakfast sandwiches.)

I continued along Route 97, passing through Bend and Klamath Falls. I was lucky to find a truck stop just before the border of Oregon and California where I fueled up for the second time on the trip. The truck was getting about 300 miles per tank of fuel. (It gets way better mileage than the Chevy I used to drive.) I realized that I might make it all the way to my destination without refueling again.

I followed a remarkably straight piece of road that had to be at least 50 miles long before climbing and descending in the foothills again.

At one point, I had an amazing view of Mount Shasta. Or at least the bottom half of Mount Shasta — the top was in a cloud.

Eventually, I reached Weed and joined up with I-5. The next 100 or so miles were mountainous, which wasn’t much fun in the rain. At least I didn’t have to worry about the bees wanting out.

Lake Shasta looked nearly empty. The water was at least 80 feet below the high water mark.

Finally, past Redding, the home stretch. It was great to see flowers on the almond trees I passed.

I got off the freeway at my exit and waited at the stop sign to make a left turn. That’s when I glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw about 200 bees flying around the back of my truck. As I’d driven, the weather had cleared and it had gotten warmer. The hives had shifted; the bees had begun to find their way out. With the truck stopped, they wanted out.

Bees
Hundreds of very unhappy bees buzzed around the back of my truck as I parked the RV.

I made my left turn and hurried the last 6 miles to my destination. By the time I was ready to back the RV into its space beside a hangar at the airport, it looked as if there was a swarm of bees in the back of my truck.

It was just after 4 PM and I’d covered 461 miles.

I had to put on my bee suit to unhook the RV. (Thank heaven no one was around to see that.)

I carried the two hives over to the side of the hangar about 25 feet in front of my RV and took the rags out. The bees from the strong hive immediately began flying out. The other hive remained quiet. I was beginning to think it was dead.

I went into town for a richly deserved dinner of chicken chow fun and Chinese ribs from my favorite Chinese restaurant West of the Mississippi. When I arrived at the restaurant, the bees that had been flying around the back of my truck were gone.

Parking the Bees

The next day, the airport manager told me to move the bees to the other end of the airport, in a rough grassy area where they tended to dump junk like old wood, tires, and fencing. We picked a place near the base of a tree. I dropped her off, donned my bee suit, and loaded the bees into the back of the truck. I had to move fast; it was getting warm quickly and the bees were eager to get outside.

I found an old palette in the temporary bee yard and set it up as a base. Then I put the hives on it, one facing northeast and the other facing northwest.

Bee Hives
The bees on arrival in their temporary home. (Can you see the hot air balloon in the corner of the photo?)

Later on, I returned with the dead hive and my beekeeping toolkit. I unstrapped the two hives and opened them up one at a time. I was shocked to see the number of bees in the healthier of the two hives. The population looked nearly as high as it did when I last looked inside that summer.

I pulled out and examined a few frames. I replaced empty honey frames with partially filled honey frames from the dead hive. I shuffled the frame around and put some brood frames from the dead hive near the center of the live one. The brood cells were empty, but there was plenty of honey in the cells around them. With luck, the queen would get right to work filling these cells with eggs. I also added a drone frame. (What the heck; why not?) Then I put a medium hive body on top of the deep and filled it with 10 medium frames. I kicked myself for leaving queen excluders at home; later, I’d buy one at the local Mann Lake store.

I closed up that hive — which was a good thing, because the bees were pretty pissed off by then — and moved on to the other one. I really didn’t expect to see anyone alive inside. But there was a clump of bees on two frames on one side of the box. They’d apparently eaten their way through the honey stores in the middle of the box. The clump wasn’t big — maybe 1,000-1,500 bees? I could only hope the queen was in the middle of the clump.

Bees
The two beehives after being configured for the next few weeks.

I did some major reorganizing. I removed some very old brood frames and replaced them with newer and cleaner brood frames from the dead hive. Then I added a honey frame filled with honey. I shuffled things around. I had to move the bees, of course — I used my bee brush to brush them into the frames in the center of the hive. Then I closed up the hive. I figure there’s a 50-50 chance of the bees surviving. If they make it through the next week and the queen is still alive, they’ll survive. I’ll examine the hive closely when I return from a trip to Santa Barbara this coming week. If I see the queen or eggs, I’ll know it’s all good. If I see neither, I’ll take action.

Either way, you can bet I’ll report on my progress here.

One more thing: it feels great to be working with my bees again.