Category Archives: Drones

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

Angela, Drones, Mavic

Bit the bullet for code training

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One of my favorite instructors on Udemy advertised a new batch of training materials with other trainers creating the “Ultimate Tech Career Toolbox 2019” with thousands of dollars worth of training materials for 239.00. If I had not waited a day I could have saved another 40.00 but I flinched. Looks like a great deal and help toward my goal of the residual income for retirement.

Now I need to spend quite a bit of time downloading all the content. I’m going to put it all on a stand alone drive just for training etc.

Angie kept sending Money requests and on Tuesday I had 14 for a total of 8,800.00 and 40 rejected phone calls. They want me to make a house payment for them plus give money to Andy so he can go to his new job. Angie then tried to call twice with someone else’s phone and when I would not answer I got an email tell me to ‘Turn the f…king phone off’ I said fine and two days later I complied with her request.

Last night I gave LeeAnne 100.00 so Andy can go to work and start getting a paycheck. She then proceeded to ask if I was going to help with the house payment. Andy should just ask for an advance on his pay to get himself out of the situation they have got into. I’m done with them.

Friday afternoon, before the sun set I had a fantastic flight with the Mavic Pro. About 20 minutes long and I’ll do some editing in Camtasia and Premier Pro for experimentation and learning these two pieces of software. I know Camtasia but not Premier Pro. I’ll also throw the video clips into After Effects as well and see what I can come up with. It will be fun.

One thing I need to do is change the maximum flight distance for the Mavic Pro. I keep running into that and then because I had such a great time I forget to change it.

Drones

I’m at a loss as to what to do with this woman

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I typed that title last week when I had another money request through PayPal from Angie for 250.00 because she wanted to get her grandbaby something for Easter. My take on that is this little one needs to grow up learning what Easter is about and not that Easter means getting presents.

Well, I declined the request again and never heard anything the rest of the week. Crossing my fingers here but the next time I want to hear from any of them is when I am being paid the 2750.00 back. Not that I really think that will ever happen.

Another good sign was that I received an email from Bryan stating that he was going to start paying me back. I actually received a payment from him on Saturday for 30.00 just like he said.

I said awhile ago I would put up a picture of my toys well here it is in all their glory

The image is little blurry because I had no external light but starting at the back left to right is a Mavic Pro and Mavic Pro Platinum, second row is a Mavic Air and Spark, finally a Tello. All of them are great I have the most flight time on the Spark because I purchased the Air and Pro/Pro Platinum during the winter months and have only had good weather a couple times. I love this hobby.

A new passion of mine have become this, I’m sure the pictures will make it clear.

This chessboard is called SquareOff and is and automatic chessboard. You play your piece, white or black and the board will move it’s piece. It looks pretty spooky at first but the quality is fairly good. I have purchased another board since this one, a DGT board and it is VERY nice. I’ll post pictures of that one next week.

For now have a great week and I’ll speak at you later.

Drones

Well worth the 750.00

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Flying the Mavic Pro Platinum in the house and ending the evening with a broken leg was not fun and purchasing a new drone cost me 750.00

Why was it worth the 750.00? Well, the seller on eBay contacted me and let me know the drone I purchased was not a Mavic Pro Platinum as advertised. It was in fact a Mavic Pro and a Mavic Pro fly more combo at that which also was not advertised. All in all I purchased a Mavic Pro fly more combo worth 1,299.00 for 750.00. I end up with both a Mavic Pro Platinum (broken leg but not unusable), Mavic Pro (like new), eight batteries, two carrying bags, two remotes, all the accessories and a great hard case. I am very happy.

On to Angie. She sent an email asking for another 200.00 because her grand baby was attacked by a dog, she sent a picture with kind of broke my heart. I told her no and of course I get the guild treatments etc.. Then she had the guts to send a money request through PayPal for the 200.00. Friday I went ahead and sent the money and again thought it would be it. No, in fact she went ahead and sent another request for 150.00 on Sunday morning. I went into PayPal, canceled the request. Who the heck does she think she is? I’m so done with her, I can’t believe I actually thought there could be something between us at one point in time. So dang stupid I am.

Drones

It cost me 750.00

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It cost me 750.00 because I flew my Mavic Pro Platinum drone in my apartment and crashed it. I think the camera is broken and one of the legs broke. These contain the antenna and now it is only good for spare parts. I found a new drone, never been activated for 750.00. Looks like a get the case, two batteries charger and controller. This give me an entirely new drone package with case, seven batteries, three sets of propellers and a bunch of spare parts. All in all a good deal for the money spent but there will be no more flying a Mavic Pro in the house again,

Angela, Mavic

And what do you think they did?

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Yes, they asked for the last 800.00 that I was supposed to give them. Angie had never told them I was not going to give them any money. Well, I gave them the 800.00, asked when I could expect to see this returned and she said ‘When I get my tax return.’ I feel it is a bunch of bull shit and do not expect a fucking thing. Sorry for the language but I am tired of that entire family.

New drone

I bought a DJI Mavic Pro Platinum with the remote, five batteries charger and hard case. Have way decent price as well.

New Scam

I had a new email scam this weekend, one involving my phone. Same bullshit as before. I deleted it and will leave it at that.

Miscellaneous, Tello by DJI

First Week Back

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Last week was the first back after my Vacation back home in Seattle. Started off with greater than 400 emails to look through. I had a Microsoft Flow set up to forward all work emails to my Gmail account enabling me to address important emails as they came in but I wasn’t online constantly so I still had a bunch to read when I got back.

Supply Chain again is going to miss a cut in point and all indications show the components (Aileron) was tree’d into the bill of materials last April. For a couple of days during the week we (Manufacturing Engineering) was being asked to drive demand for the old part numbers. Needless to say I told them to pound sand (not those exact words) but we did find another solution which accommodates all of those involved in this fiasco.

This particular issue resulted in many emails with some quite high level people making some very stupid suggestions. In the end my boss thanked me for the support I gave and let me know how valuable I am to the organization. The final meeting I had was with our manager and the Program manager hashing out what we needed to do to get things workings. That meeting went very well and made the week fantastic.

Elton John Concert 2-9-2019

I purchased my tickets for the Elton John concert on Saturday 2-9-2019 this weekend and looking forward to that. After I purchased my tickets I realized that his album ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ was the first album I played on my stereo.

T. G. Vacation

One of the guys here at work is on vacation for a week. Dan went first with two weeks, I went second with two weeks and he is the last to go for a week. It will be a quiet week thank goodness.

Osmo Pocket Testing

I did some testing with the Osmo Pocket last Friday and it was perfectly timed with the latest firmware update from DJI. I set the Osmo pocket up on a tripod with the iPhone wanting to test the object tracking function. I placed my Tello drone at my front door, started it up and had the Osmo Pocket tracking its flight around the living room. Looking fantastic then realized I forgotten to start the freaking recording. I was also having problems getting the drone pared with the remote controller. Having said that everything worked great while I got the recording started while I was flying using the phone interface instead of the controller. This Friday I’ll get the remote working again and do some more testing.

Tax return is in!

I filed my taxes Monday afternoon, the soonest I have ever filed and on Friday the first of February my federal taxes were deposited into my account. Now the question is… what toys do I want to buy or am I going to use this as part of a down payment on a house. Decisions decisions….

DJI Spark, Drones, Mavic

I liked my Spark but LOVE the Mavic Air

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Yes, previously I have said how much I love my DJI Spark. Flies very well. I had some problems but those were in each case, my fault. I was able to fly my new drone, the Mavic Air on Friday evening when I arrived home and the rain and wind had stopped.

I had been told the Mavic Air was very loud, the WiFi connection wasn’t that good and the range was bad etc. etc..

I’m here to tell you that all of those negative statements are far from the truth. The drone flew wonderfully smooth compared to the Spark, The Mavic Air was actually quiet compared to the Spark, not much but was quiet. The Wifi was clear with a great signal without my range extenders. I took a short video which I will post here tonight when I down res to 720p, currently it is 4k.

I LOVE it and can’t wait to bring it to the mountain cabin.

DJI Spark

Thanksgiving Holiday

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T’was the Thanksgiving holiday time the last four days and it was relaxing. That means I did nothing, no exercise or anything but this was only because I was SICK the entire four days!

Yes, I was sick the entire holiday time. I had to skip dinner with friends and could not taste anything until last night around 4:00 pm. There was no really good eating, either good for me or good tasting. I am officially not giving any vitals today as I know they won’t be the best.

I came close to losing my Spark again. I went flying Wednesday night and I don’t think the batteries were up to the flight. They were charged but I think the cold weather got the better of them. Anyway about eight minutes into the flight the drone became a bit unresponsive and started to land where she was. Not far away and not any kind of hard landing, just wend down in what looked like a grassy area. I quickly left and headed out toward where I thought it was and ran into a couple that had found it. Fantastic of them, just asked if I was looking for anything and handed it over. I did lose the battery though.

I made some Tater tot Casserole during the holiday weekend, one was made on Wednesday evening but by that time my taste buds were so far gone I had no clue if it turned out good or not. I made the second yesterday and by the afternoon I could taste and was pleasantly surprised by my creation. Not really my creation but one I found online. I’ll edit with the picture I took before placing in the oven.