Tag Archives: videos

Snowbirding 2022: A Visit to 5 Palms Hot Spring

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Tracking down another California Hot Spring — with some difficulty.

In mid January 2022, I departed my campsite at the Holtville Hot Spring and headed toward Salton Sea where I had a campground reservation at a state park. Along the way, I tracked down and visited the 5 Palms Hot Spring. This is the video I made of my campground departure and Hot Spring Visit.

It took me a while to put this together because I originally planned to turn the whole day into one video. It was going long and I didn’t like the way it was coming out. So I cut a bunch out and reworked it for this. I’ll likely have another video from that day soon — I visited a weird place on Salton Sea and took a lot of video clips there that are definitely worth seeing if you like to see weird, abandoned stuff. How about subscribing and turning on that notification bell so you know when I release new videos?

Please don’t be afraid to share your thoughts or questions in the comments for this video.

Snowbirding 2022: In Historic Downtown Ajo, AZ

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A quick stop in an historic mining town.

After two nights boondocking out in the desert south of Ajo, AZ (see my previous video), I decided to stop at Ajo Plaza on my way out of town. Due to poor planning on my part, everything was closed. And, of course, since I didn’t really expect to stop along the way, I didn’t do any research beforehand, so the audio includes me babbling about the area.

Ajo is a small mining town with a year-round population of about 3000 people (per the 2020 census). You can learn more in its Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajo,_Arizona) or on its Chamber of Commerce website (http://www.ajochamber.com/).

I’ve love your feedback about this style of video. Short, narrated views are easy for me to shoot but lack the polish you might find in more produced videos.

Helicopter Cockpit POV Flight: Return from Cherry Drying

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Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

After another deep dive into my raw footage archives, I found this short video I shot after fueling at the airport. It has in-cockpit narration, but there’s no helicopter sound because it was shot with just one camera. I left the airport but instead of flying straight back to base, I made a detour to overfly a friend’s house, so it’s a bit longer than the normal 3-4 minute flight.

Hiller Flight with Cockpit POV

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Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

A while back, I published a video I shot with my iPhone from the inside of a Hiller flown by my friend Mike. Here’s the GoPro footage for part of that flight. Mike is at the controls in the single, centered front seat. I’m sitting in back on the left side, just taking in the view and shooting video with my phone. Sometimes it’s nice to be a passenger.

In this video, we lift off from Mike’s home at a residential airpark in Arizona and head north and west, eventually starting to circle South Mountain. True to form, one of my GoPros died, so the video ends quite unexpectedly, right after Mike makes a profound observation.

The video has angled black borders because I set up the camera on an angle and everything was slanted. Rather than drive you nuts with a crooked view, I adjusted the video to level the horizon. I didn’t crop the image because I wanted to keep the full view of the instrument panel and as much of the area in front of us as I could.

Many thanks again to Mike for taking me on this ride.

Helicopter Nose View: Wenatchee to Hillsboro, full-length with music

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My entire August 2012 helicopter trip from Wenatchee WA to Hillsboro OR as seen from the nose of my helicopter just after dawn, set to music.

From the FlyingMAir YouTube channel, here’s all the video I shot on that great August 2012 flight. It’s the kind of video you’d put on the TV or a monitor when you just want to relax. Enjoy.