Monthly Archives: August 2019

Mavic, Photography

Fantastic Weekend 08-24-2019

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What a great weekend. It started out with a new drone delivered on Thursday, a Mavic 2 Pro. This one to replace the one I lost.

When coming home on Thursday I decided not to stop at the liquor store and make sure I stayed sober all weekend. The main reason for this is to stop consuming all those empty calories from the alcohol. It turned out to be the best weekend in years. Sometimes I forget how good it feels to not be ‘sick and tired’ as handovers usually feel.

I also had a Tiffen 82mm variable ND filter delivered. It seemed to review good and I purchased the large diameter filter with step up rings for all of my lenses. This allows me to eliminate the vignette that shows up on variable ND’s at the max settings but won’t eliminate the horrible ‘X’ pattern variable ND’s are noted for. I have never seen this on the smaller variable ND’s I have but this one is very noticeable but you can reduce or eliminate this by pulling the ND from max and or shutting down the aperture a little. I will have to experiment because having the ND is needed for getting the shallow depth of field on a bright day.

The command module arrived from DJI for the Ronin-SC on Sunday which allows me to operate the gimbal without connecting my phone all the time and this is wonderful.

I got out my label maker this weekend and labeled all of my drone batteries, camera batteries, all batteries. The drone batteries especially in preparation for the app I’m going to design for drone flights. It will be a drone flight log keeping track of your flight time, battery flight time, charge cycle, flight logs with telemetry information etc. Looking forward to creating that. I kept telling myself to get everything labeled but was always too dang lazy (see sick and tired above).

I also got on the Peloton Sunday morning for a 45 minute heart rate zone ride with Jennifer Jacobs which felt really great. Bad news now, I tried to take to the most recent class and it was dated around June 20th. I then did some checking and found Jennifer Jacobs left Peloton to pursue new activities. I really liked riding the bike with her classes, particularly the heart rate zone and 80’s rock rides. I’ll have to find another now.

Good luck in whatever she decides to do.

Time to get off here now and get to work!

Drones, Mavic

Win one, Lose one

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One week after getting a new Mavic 2 pro drone I lose the same. I take 100 percent blame for this and is why I am not all that upset. I decided to fly the new drone without doing any compass calibration, no calibration at all. I took off at night which is ok because you can do that as a hobbyist also I’m not in controlled airspace but and this is a big but, I was under the influence of alcohol. Stupid I know and I flew until the battery was depleted and it dropped out of the sky. Being at night I had no luck finding it when I went looking. I know I was close but no luck.

I promptly went in and ordered a new one to be delivered on Thursday the 22nd of August.

On a brighter note, I was notified that my Ronin-SC would be arriving by 10:00am on Monday which I was not happy about because I was going to be home on Friday the day I was originally told was the arrival date. I got my memory card cases on Thursday, my variable 67mm ND filter Friday morning and my lens in just little bit later and then surprise of surprises fedEx arrived and had my Ronin!!

I spent the rest of the weekend just staring at it completely petrified to rig my camera up to it and balance. I was very intimated by this wonder piece of engineering.

I turned on a YouTube video I had saved just for balancing the gimbal and started following his instructions and found the process very easy and was able to balance my camera in about 15 minutes. Now the fun begins 🙂

P.S. The mistake Thursday night cost me $1,300.00

Photography

Going to SC in September

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Taking a trip to SC in September for Ricks and Barbara’s anniversary. Leave on the 20th and return on the 25th. I even applied to get TSA Pre-Verified. I won’t have to take off my shoes, get in a shorter line etc. I think it will be a good time.

My new Mavic 2 Pro arrived on Friday and a new 7.5mm wide angle lens arrived on my birthday Saturday. Clouds were out at night so I couldn’t take any astro photographs maybe next weekend.

Blender

Bonus plus a bunch of new toys!

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Finally the ‘End of Program’ has hit. What this means, I can finally talk about the papers I signed a year and a half ago. For sticking it out on the program I have been working on I was to receive a retention bonus of $54,000.00, $14,000.00 of which I received early and ended up giving it to Angie to pay off all of her stupid loans, the money she stole from her mother and the money she stole from her dads headstone fund. That being the entire reason I am no longer speaking with Angie or her kids. She took that money with the understanding she can no longer get any money but that never stopped her making me unable to save it back up.

Well, last week I received a paycheck in excess of $28,000.00. I spend $1,497.00 on a new electric bike from https://lectricbikes.com. Then I purchased a new Mavic 2 Pro drone and payed off the Ronin-SC from my PayPal Credit. All three of those totaled over $4,000.00 and I still might purchase a DGT Bluetooth chessboard. I haven’t decided on that one yet. Now, the Ronin-SC should show up within two weeks or so, the bike should be shipped sometime early September and the drone, the last to be ordered will be the first to arrive on the eighth of August, just in time for my birthday (the bike is my real birthday present). I can hardly wait for all these for finally show up.

I’m left with $26,600.00 in savings and by the end of the month this should top out over $28,000.00. Nice to have a cushion there for if I get laid off within the next year or so.

Great times ahead!