Tag Archives: YouTube

Mesa to Sedona by Helicopter, Part 1

Posted on by
Comment

Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

Join me and fellow helicopter pilot Dave as we fly from Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ (FFZ) to Sedona, AZ (SEZ) along the Salt and Verde Rivers and through the Verde River Valley. I’ve cut this hour+ flight into multiple parts, each highlighting a specific area of our flight. In this flight, we begin on the ground at Falcon field, make a Gecko 2 departure across the runway, and hookup with the Salt River, where I drop altitude and point out numerous wild horses in the river. Along the way, you’ll hear radio communications with Falcon tower, our in-cockpit conversation, and us working through an intercom issue. At the end of this video, we’ve just turned up the Verde River and are making a detour to take a closer look at the fountain at Fountain Hills.

Dave is an airline pilot who is working through his helicopter ratings. At the time of this flight, he was a private helicopter pilot; he got his commercial helicopter rating a few weeks later. Dave and I split the cost of this flight; I flew to Sedona and he flew back.

Many, many thanks to channel members and Patreon patrons. It’s your membership dollars that made this flight in Arizona possible.

NOTE: This is the 1080 HD version of this video. A 4K UHD version without the Member Wall is available to channel members at the Supporter and Funder levels.

Helicopter Tour of the Los Angeles Area

Posted on by
Comment

Another video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

Join me and fellow helicopter pilot Skyler as Skyler pilots my helicopter around his home turf, the Los Angeles area, to give me an aerial tour. We depart Whiteman Airport, pass through Burbank’s airspace, and tour several points of interest from the air — Universal Studios, the Hollywood sign, Griffith Park Observatory, Dodgers Stadium (where the cars were lined up for COVID vaccinations), and downtown Los Angeles — before landing at Hawthorne Airport (home of SpaceX). I’ve got in-cockpit audio for most of the flight (after resolving a camera issue while Skyler was flying) so you can hear various airport towers as well as other aircraft making position calls on the Los Angeles helicopter common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF). I’ve added a few still photos I took along the way, too.

My Vlog

Posted on by
Comment

I brush the dust off my personal YouTube channel for use as a vlog.

I began posting videos to YouTube on my personal YouTube channel way back in 2007. Back then — as today — the videos were mostly short clips I used to share things going on in my life. I guess I used it a lot like folks use TikTok today. (And no, I don’t have a TikTok channel or any desire to get one.)

The cool thing about putting content on YouTube for so many years is that I can look back at my life and what was going on. Some of those posts are better than blog entries because they show more than they tell. (If you’re a writer, you should understand the value of that.) I find special value in the posts that highlight things in progress, like the building of my new home or the development of my cats from kittens to full grown barn cats. Just the other day I watched a video from 2015 where I noticed the tree I’d found growing in one of my planters; not long afterward, I’d replanted that tree in my yard and it’s now more than 30 feet tall. (No kidding!)

Although I put a lot of time, energy, and money into the FlyingMAir YouTube Channel, I pretty much neglect the Maria Langer YouTube channel. There are only so many hours in a day and these days I have little desire to spend my time in front of a computer. I’ll be frank: the FlyingMAir channel earns me money through ad revenue and memberships; the Maria Langer channel does not. The FlyingMAir channel has nearly 70K subscribers; the Maria Langer channel does not. In my shoes, where would you put your time?

But I’ve recently decided I want to do more vlogging — video blogging. While lots of folks seem to consider the content on the FlyingMAir channel to be “vlogs,” I don’t. To me, a vlog is more personal and less edited. It might take me hours to video, store, back up, edit, render, and upload a 30-minute flying video. I think a vlog entry should be looser and more spontaneous. It should be something I can create quickly with my phone as the camera. Something that shares what’s on my mind or what’s right in front of me at a specific moment. Something I can upload quickly, perhaps minutes after I record it. Or maybe even while it’s going on, as a livestream.


I posted this on Twitter yesterday, but I sure wish I’d slowed down and shared it live.

What kind of content would I livestream? Well, yesterday morning, I woke to find a blanket of snow covering my entire area. It was absolutely gorgeous. But what was even more amazing was the way the sunlight hit those snowcapped peaks as the sun came up. That’s the kind of thing that’s great to share live and save for future viewing.

And how about when the bighorn sheep return to the neighborhood, as they’re likely to do within the next month or so? I’d love to create a livestream where I answer questions about them while videoing them grazing in my yard. (There actually is a livestream of this on the FlyingMAir YouTube channel; the only way to livestream it was to put it on a channel where it really didn’t belong.)

And right now, because the temperature is around freezing, the wind machines in the area are running. I’d love to share a live view of them in action, answering viewer questions as I record the sound.

That’s the kind of content that interests me. The stuff that’s going on now, the stuff I can share live with others who might have questions or comments about it. Interactive video content that doesn’t rely on editing to be interesting. Something short and sweet.

The trouble is, with fewer than 1000 subscribers on my personal channel, I can’t enable the mobile device live-streaming feature. I can only livestream from a laptop or desktop — and who the hell wants to see my talking head, especially with a view that’s likely to look up my nose?

So that brings me to a request. Can those of you reading this who have Google/Gmail/YouTube accounts go to my channel and subscribe? As I type this, I’m only 85 subscribers short of being able to turn on mobile device live-streaming. You can be one of those 85 subscribers! Three easy steps:

  1. Go here: https://www.youtube.com/c/MariaLanger/
  2. Click the Subscribe button.
  3. To be notified when there’s new content, click the bell icon to run on notifications.

And even if you don’t want to subscribe, I urge you to take a moment to check out the channel and some of the videos you’ll find there. They cover a wide range of topics and I’m pretty sure that if you like this blog, you’ll find at least a few short videos that you’l also enjoy.

Oh, and if you’re a Twitter user, follow me on Twitter. I might not tweet a lot of stuff, but most of it is personal and blog-like. After all, Twitter began as a microblogging platform and that’s still how I use it.