Quadcopter

So I've had a rough few weeks.  So rough that I didn't really even have a chance to celebrate my birthday (actually, I was on a plane) so wanted to have something cool and new to play with.   I've actually wanted an RC airplane since high school, but figured that it would be an endless frutrating stream of broken wings and props.  Enter the quadcopter:  a RC flying machine with a much more shallow learning curve.    I have been reading about RC drones for a while, and recently a company called DJI that sells the flight control "brains"used in many multi rotors copters released their own quadcopter which is called the Phantom.  Everyone seems to love it, even if there are a few things that they got wrong.  I did a little research and at least in my opinion, for a quad carrying a HD Hero, the Phantom is the best deal going.  The GoPro is not the best for stills, but excels at video.  I picked one up from a local shop on the other side of town (http://www.flashrc.com/, HIGHLY recommended) , started the thing charging, picked up the kids, asked who wanted to see daddy's new helicopter, and interpreted their YAAAAAAY YES ME I WANT TOs as an affirmative.  I had watched all the tutorial videos except the advanced guide multiple times and started off gently.  I did not, however notice the fact that when you get an imperfect GPS lock, the copter does not use GPS to correct its flight, so hands off the joysticks=copter continues to coast.  So, long story short, on the second flight a mild puff of wind starts the phantom going towards the forest.  Worse still, it gets turned around so all the directions controls are now flipped.  It lofted slowly over the fence and crash landed in an immense stand of bushes.  Nice.  I put the controller down, and with the kids in tow began bushwhacking in my shorts and sandals.  That's when I noticed that this was no ordinary stand of bushes, but chest high stinging nettles with some blackberry vines weaving through them for.  Zoe tried to follow me without my noticing and she was soon crying from a nettle sting, and my arms and legs were starting to throb.  I brought the kids back to the chateau, got on my Carhartts (the ones I used to use when I was chainsawing stuff) and headed back into the sea of pain.  After stomping down a large area, I eventually found the thing deep in a nettle.  So not the most auspicious of starts, but it could have been a wall, I suppose.

Since then (Monday) I have done at least six flights and am getting better and better but still have moments of terror when the copter gets turned around and the controls are shifted by 90, 180 or 270 degrees.  I have to say though that this thing is amazing.  It will climb, drop and glide as fast (ok, much faster) than I am comfortable with and gets around 12 minutes from a fully charged pack.

Tonight I showed it off to Franck and managed not to crash it or injure either one of us, despite the lack of GPS lock again and a bit of wind.




I can't wait to do flyovers of cols, cliffs etc.  This is going to be amazing.

An amazing book

I was combing through eBay looking for prints of some of my favorite local spots, when I found a beautiful print of La Berarde.  It was only $20 and I almost bought it immediately, but was so intrigued by it that I did a little research on it's provenance.  It turned out to be a litho by Thornton Oakley from 1927.  Unfortunately, it was a plate that had been sawed out of a book (Cloud Lands of France) by someone.  I think most people who like engravings know that many antique books get chopped up and sold individually by dealers.  Even large and very famous places like Graham Arader did it at one time.  It's called "Book Breaking", and I think it sucks.  Not as bad as breaking library books, but still pretty lame.  Anyway, the big argument that book breakers will make is that they make artwork that would be impossibly  expensive as a book accessible to  most people as individual plates.  i.e. very few people would be able to afford an atlas, but many people can afford to buy one print chopped out of an atlas.  I guess I can kind of buy it.  Anyway, as soon as I discovered that the Thornton Oakley print came from a book, I immediately decided to find and buy the entire book.  I was girding myself for an astronomical price, but within five minutes had found a first edition in very good condition for ten USD.  Thats right, a first edition book from 1927 with lithographically printed drawings for ten bucks.  I bought it immediately (and am thinking about trying to buy up more copies to keep them out of the hands of the book breakers).  A few weeks laster, I received it in the mail.  Let me cut to the chase: It is a revelation.  The drawings are beautiful.  The writing (by Amy Oakley, Thornton's wife) is fabulous  and contains much fascinating history of the region.  Last, but not least, I just fell in love with the story of a young American couple from Philadelphia arriving by boat and exploring some of our very favorite (and quite remote in 1924) places in the Alps.

Here are some terrible scans

Best car show ever!

a friend sent me a link to a video in which some dudes attach a rocket engine to a bike.  It was entertaining, but fortuitously at the end there was a link to a video on "How to turbo your car" .  Being a long time turbo enthusiast, I couldn't resist clicking on it and found a fantastic new (to me) car show.  Don't get me wrong:  I love Top Gear, but their "idiot car guy" schtick is starting to wear thin, even if Clarkson is still very entertaining.  Also, I am kind of getting tired of looking at "films", as they like to call their little video clips, of impossibly expensive hyper cars.  That's a big part of the appeal of this new show.  It's just a couple of very enthusiastic, hilarious and skilled Aussies who show people how to modify cars in various ways.  Their latest feature was a how-to guide for turboing a mazda Miata.  There's a guy that they call the Turbo Yoda, who welds them together a new exhaust manifold!  Anyway, I love the show, even if I will never do anything like that to our Honda.  Old dog, new tricks after all.  The show is called Mighty Car Mods.





Many more on their channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/mightycarmods?feature=watch

extra points for them being Australian, because Aussies are the best!

Mom here!