Flight Chronicles - Simulation

Well, my heli is still down. So, while I am waiting to get new parts, I have been doing some simulated flying. While it is not nearly as enjoyable or satisfying as the real thing, it certainly shows me where I am still lacking in skill. Which in my case includes almost everything from take off to landing. Well, o.k, not quite that bad, but I have a lot of things to learn yet. My hovering is coming along nicely. Unfortunately, it is too easy, and not very realistic on the simulator, but it did help me orient my controls to my heli, so it has been very helpful. To get that unstable hovering simulation, I manually injected some movement in to the system, then learned how to correct for it. Now it is automatic on the real thing.

My buddies that already have heli's have been talking about this nose in hover thing, so I have decided to work on that in the simulator. I always thought to myself, how difficult can this be? You just put yourself in to the perspective of being in the cockpit and control it from there, right? After about my umpteenth simulated crash, I figured out how untrue this is, so I have to give those guys some serious credit for this skill. Heck, as soon as I learned to hover, I realized just how difficult that is as well. So kudos to you two for your skillz you have have. I am inspired and will be working hard to fly like Goose from Top Gun. Until then, I guess I will learn to crawl, walk, then Run. Damn this is hard for an impatient cuss like myself.

Back to the simulator,

-JbJ

Global Control

Isn't global warming great? Yesterday I got in my car, and this is what I saw. This was April 26th, and yes, that is snow on my windshield. As you can see, this wonderful spring day wasn't like normal spring days, nope, it came with cold
and snow. I personally love snow, just not in
April, especially late April. Isn't the saying "April showers bring May flowers"?






A couple weeks ago I looked out the window and saw this. Another beautiful snowy April day. Now, from what I am told, "The Debate is Over", right Al? I couldn't agree more. The climate is continually changing, and we really have very little ability to control it. We are supposed to be warming the earth each year, but this year seams to be a bit different. If it is us causing global warming, how was the earth able to fight back this year? You got me, maybe it is bigger and more powerful than us little humans? Now back to the title of this post "Global Control". Yep, I think that is more what it is about. What light bulbs I can buy and what cars I can drive. Not to mention what fuel I can put in my car because we will not explore and drill for more oil. If you do not want to use oil, how about nuclear. Oh yeah, that is right, we can't build that either. It would be better if we grew corn and put it in our fuel tanks. Now that makes sense. Ethanol from corn uses a bigger footprint, and takes more energy to extract. But hey, it is renewable, isn't that was this is all about? Obviously not viable common sense solutions. Don't get me wrong, if someone has a great idea to remove us from our dependency on oil, I'm all over. But the reason alternatives have not caught on is, they do not work and they are not as efficient as oil. Sucks, but it is the truth. Now please, please please quit screwing with the system and let farmers grow corn to eat so I can quit paying $4.00 a gallon for milk. I would appreciate it.

Have a good one,

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - Grounded

Well, the heli is down for a count. I attempted repairing the broken pieces, but now it just wants to dart straight to the left on take off, making in house flight nearly impossible for a beginner such as myself. Outside I can hold it for a few seconds, but it swirls out of control eventually. So, unfortunately all of my cobbled up fixes couldn't put my heli back together again. I will have to order me some new pieces online. I wish there were a store near by that carried the parts, but they do not have any for my model. When the new pieces come in, I will get some video and post it for you all to see my krazy new skillz behind the controls.

Until then, I'll be looking out the window at those still days, waiting for the parts. Oh wait, it snowing outside. I guess there is no hurry after all. April 26th and snow, imagine that. Hey Al, can we turn the thermostat up again. I prefer global warming.

-JbJ

The fun of Travel

So here I am, cruisin' up I35, minding my business, that is until mother nature rears her ugly head. Yeah, it was only rain, so it shouldn't be a big deal right? I even slowed down to 60 for the occasion, I do that now that I am older. The rain was really coming down now. I had just been passed by another car thinking everything was fine. It was until my rear end started to drift to the right, you see, now I am not going straight down the freeway any more. More like driving down the road at a 10 degree angle. So I straightened that out only to end up driving at the opposite angle. As my car spun the other way, I took a quick look in the rear view mirror to see about 4 - 5 cars, not far behind me at that. All I could think was "Well, if none of them hit me, this will be a success". One more spin of the rear end and off to the ditch I go finishing with marvelous 360. I hope those folks behind me enjoyed the show.

So here I am sitting in the median on I35 with one word coming to mind. I won't post the word to keep this kid friendly, but go ahead and use your imagination. All right, you guessed it, the four letter word was "darn" ;-)

What's next? How do I get out. Easy right? Just drive right out. Yeah, that is what I thought too. Problem is, neither forward nor reverse move me anywhere. You see, the median is like a small river during these little down pours. I opened my door to find about 9 inches of water flowing by. What now. Obvious, being a guy, try forward and reverse 15 more times to be sure this is not getting me anywhere and make sure the front tires are fully buried in to the soft ground. So here I am, pondering my predicament for a few minutes when, the phone rings, It's my wife. She has impeccable timing. "How are you doing?" she asks. Do I tell her I am sitting in the median and freak her out, or do I lie to save her. I can tell her later after I have been released from my muddy mess? Since I am not good at lying to my wife, I tell her the truth. "I am sitting in the ditch". At first, disbelief, but eventually she believes I am not joking. You have to understand, I kid a lot, so I understand her skepticism. While talking to her a good citizen stops to offer help. I graciously accept and off we go in his car to find the nearest town in search of a tow. South does not prove promising, so we turn around knowing that Albert Lea is only a mile up the road from my car. As we reach the buried mess we notice it has been discovered by a state trooper. We pull over, and I thank the gentleman, offering him compensation for his kindness, he politely denies. I thank him for the 10th time and head on over to the trooper.

To end this long story, since the rest is pretty mundane, not that the previous wasn't. The trooper calls a tow truck, tow truck arrives, pulls me out. Accepts compensation and away I go.

I am not sure how this happened, only two short months ago I drove all the way from the north end of Iowa to the south end in a blizzard, and not a mark on me. Now I get taken out by rain. Yep, my pride is a bit bruised. Oh well, so is life. You never know what is going to get you in the end.

So be it, that was my excitement for the day, I'm out,

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles

Hey all,

So I got my self a new toy. I have wanted one of these since I was 10, maybe even younger. Problem was, they have always been very expensive. Well, that has all changed, they are now only a $100.00. So, I decided it was time. Well, my RC helicopter arrived over a week ago and I have been practicing my crashing ever since. So far I have only wrecked the landing gear and swash plate. Turns out the higher you start to fly, the greater the consequences. Yes, this is obvious, but sometimes reality doesn't kick in until you have actually broken something.

The helicopter I went with was the Honeybee mark 3. In the beginning it proved very challenging to place controlled distance between the copter and the ground, but finally, I have started to be able to hover with out a crash for up to 30 seconds. I will start to take video of my progress so that you, the reader can enjoy the experience as if you were there. Aren't you excited? Thought so.

Till later,

-JbJ

The bloggin' begins

Hey all,

Here I am blogging. Didn't think I would ever do this. All though I am really doing this to test the blogging waters out for Breck. I am looking to set something up so that he has a place to post video clips. You see, he is very interested in sports , and has an unbelievable memory for sports information. He is continuously talking about this team did that, or that team did this. He is also interested in making movies. I put these together and thought that a video blog would be a great forum for him. When I asked what he thought about this I couldn't believe his excitement as he headed to the T.V. room to watch, well... T.V.

My next phase is to customize a sports template and see if I can post videos to this blog. If so, this just may be my place. If not I will keep looking to find a place where I can post video blogs.'

Well, here we go,

-JbJ