Lighted Boat Parade

We headed down to the marina Saturday evening to watch our local yacht club’s Lighted Boat Parade. Six boats participated this year. While we were waiting for the event to start, I set up my tripod while Siena and my wife headed down the waterfront trail. As they returned, Siena decided to run ahead toward me, crossing the path of five very large dogs with glowing LED collars, reminiscent of the robotic dogs from the movie Up! The dogs were friendly, but it gave us all a momentary scare to see them bounding toward her in the dark.

After gathering at the mouth of the harbor, the lighted boats headed off in formation toward their party spot. Sadly I didn’t get to join them; I could only shoot pictures from afar. Siena yelled “Merry Christmas!” to each boat as it passed closest to us. They were friendly and returned her greeting, some coordinating their effort to the count of three.

Harbor

We were ready to head home as the boats crossed under the bridge and out of sight. Just before we reached the car, our daughter befriended a 5 year old and they took off running in the opposite direction. Together they followed the waterfront trail under the bridge to a nearby hotel where the boats had gathered to put on a show for the hotel’s guests. We definitely got our exercise trailing these preschoolers with boundless energy.

As we were headed home, Siena whined that she wanted to ride on the boats, to which my wife replied, “we ride in airplanes sweetie, not boats”. I smiled.

Posted by on 10 December 2012 at 5:37 PM

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Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This was our first Thanksgiving at home and we cooked a feast!

Ready to eat!

Posted by on 22 November 2012 at 9:07 PM

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Hiking Near Lake Lenore and the Grand Coulee Dam

I drove up to Grand Coulee to visit an old friend from college, Kylee. We were engineering students at Cal Poly where she earned her mechanical engineering degree. Now she’s working at the Grand Coulee Dam on temporary assignment through the end of the year. In addition to giving me a tour of the dam, we also ventured off into the surrounding wasteland for a hike near Lake Lenore.

The landscape of Northeastern Washington is dry, hot and barren, but strikingly beautiful as well. The land was created by fire and shaped by water over millions of years:

  • 40 to 60 million years ago: Granite bedrock formed deep in the Earth’s crust, eventually being uplifted to form small mountains and an inland sea.
  • 10 to 18 million years Ago: The Grand Ronde Rift experienced a series of volcanic eruptions which filled the inland sea with basaltic lava.
  • 2.5 million years ago: The Pleistocene glaciation covered much of North America with ice sheets, which blocked the Columbia River causing it to divert to the south, creating a channel which would eventually become The Grand Coulee.
  • 18,000 years ago: Glacial ice advanced to block the Clark Fork River drainage in present day Idaho, creating a massive lake which covered much of Montana. The natural ice dam failed, releasing roughly 500 cubic miles of water in 48 hours. This process is thought to have occurred periodically resulting in a cataclysmic event that we now know as the Missoula Floods.

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Posted by on 18 September 2012 at 6:13 PM

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Anniversary Walk at the Columbia Gorge Hotel

We walked the grounds of the Columbia Gorge Hotel prior to going out to dinner for our 5th wedding anniversary. I shot this with my iPhone. I certainly don’t need an SLR to capture my wife’s stunning beauty.

Blessed

Posted by on 25 August 2012 at 5:56 PM

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Photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower in Trout Lake

I attended a star party last night in Trout Lake with Jim White, our local astronomer. Once again, he brought his 20″ Newtonian reflector telescope and showed us a variety of deep space objects: nebulae, distant galaxies (including M101 and M51), open and globular clusters, etc. The weather was perfect with not a single cloud in the sky.  We also were fortunate to have a new moon, with the only source of light pollution being a tiny light at the nearby school. The Perseid Meteor shower was peaking last night, so I brought my camera and set it up for automatic interval shooting. I shot about 200 frames, but only a few captures meteorites. Due to the randomness and brevity of these  showers, it was mostly luck and a ton of patience that allowed me to capture anything at all.

Final perseid

Some Tips

Just in case you’re interested in my technique (or lack thereof) here are a few pointers on what I did.

  • Use a sturdy tripod – this cannot be emphasized enough
  • Remove any filters from the lens that could block light (neutral density, polarizer, etc.)
  • Try to focus at infinity or on a distant source of light. Use manual focus.
  • Wide open aperture
  • Use a relatively high ISO without generating too much noise (I used 640)
  • 30 second exposure (go longer and the rotation of the Earth will blur the stars)
  • Set interval shooting to occur in rapid succession

Posted by on 12 August 2012 at 1:53 PM

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Traxxas Summit FPV: Getting Started

I have always been interested in remotely piloted vehicles and the radio-control (RC) hobby, though it was only recently that I started actually participating in it. Ever since my childhood, I had dreamed about placing a wireless video camera inside an RC airplane to experience flight from a first person perspective. As a child, the dream was just that: a dream; fun to think about but mostly unachievable due to the massive learning curve. The cost of the RC hobby was prohibitive at that time, as was the cost (and weight) of the electronics necessary to enable wireless video transmission. Even learning to fly an RC airplane was problematic because there was no room for error once your model left the ground.

Fast forward to the mid 2000s where my interest in unmanned, remotely piloted vehicles led me to engineering school. As a new EE grad I had a strong technical background and the RC hobby was mature and relatively affordable. Lost in a myriad of excuses, I still kept postponing my plans. A few years later, I had the opportunity to earn my private pilot certificate and I jumped on it. Even the experience of real flight didn’t deter my desire to experience first-person RC flight. It wasn’t until last Christmas that the RC bug finally bit. Unwilling to take the step of buying my first model, it was bought for me as a present from my in-laws. I received a Syma S107, IR-controlled, 3-channel helicopter. That was all it took. I was now an RC hobbyist.

The Syma S107 led to my purchase of another one, followed quickly by the purchase of a DX6i transmitter and three Blade Helicopters: a MCX2, MSRX, and 120SR. A month after that I picked up Eflite’s version of the Sbach 342. As of today, I have several kits I have yet to put together: an Align 500 EFL and a Multiplex EZ Glider. While my other RC models are too small to hold serious video equipment, the latter two are prefect for it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t willing to jump into FPV (first-person-view) with two aircraft simply because a single mistake would lead to a crash and loss of some serious hardware. So, I bought a Traxxas Summit for ground FPV. This will let me experiment, build up my ground station and make mistakes that, at worse, would lead to me walking a few hundred feet to overturn a flipped truck.

I picked the Summit because of its utility. The truck has a remotely-operable, two-speed transmission for low and high gear. The low gear mode can be further augmented by locking front and rear differentials. The truck also features four-wheel independent suspension. I wanted something that allows me to really explore and get out of tricky spots if necessary. In the weeks/months to come, I will convert this very capable off-road RC truck into an FPV machine and report on my progress in future blog posts. This is a sample of what I hope to do in the near future:

Posted by on 10 August 2012 at 8:08 PM

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Hiking Oneonta Gorge

TrailheadMy wife and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary with a hike to Oneonta Gorge. The weather was perfect with a bright sunny day and an ambient temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Little Red Hen had visited Oneonta Gorge as a teenanger and since then she had dreamed about coming back one day with a sweetheart. This was a perfect opportunity as her friend offered child care for our little Fuss Nugget.

Oneonta Gorge is a unique trail. It’s not very long or complicated, nor is there much elevation gain. This trail is unique in that the creek itself is the trail. In the summer months, when the temperature is warm and the water levels are low, it’s possible to hike from the trail head to a majestic waterfall over a distance of less than a half mile. The gorge itself is a narrow slot canyon with very high walls, providing excellent shelter from the sun. The cold water of the creek, shade provided by the high walls and the cool breeze blowing through the canyon make this spot an ideal respite from a hot day. [Read more…]

Posted by on 7 August 2012 at 12:12 AM

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2012 Oregon International Air Show

2012 Oregon Air ShowEver since I finished flight school, I’ve been more interested in airshows and fly-ins. Sadly, I attended the air show solo this year since the Fuss Nugget was just too fussy to stick around. Between the bright sun and uncomfortable shoes she didn’t have much of a chance. Speaking of sun, it was a hot one this year! Temperatures rose to about 104 deg Fahrenheit with only a small breeze keeping the event on the edge of bearable. The organizers of the show failed miserably on the availability of water, with only a few stations scattered in inconvenient locations, all ahead of long lines. A few vendors sold ice cold water at $3.00 per bottle, a price I was more than willing to pay. Another annoyance was the fact that many of the food vendors were located in the VIP area of the air show, requiring ticket upgrades. The air show nazis held the checkpoint steadfastly, refusing to allow anyone in for a temporary visit to the “restricted” food vendors. The combined lameness of these two annoyances, along with a lack of interesting exhibits will probably drive me to watch the show from across the airport with an air band radio next year. I’m sure that listening to the CTAF/tower frequency will be far more interesting than listening to the announcers. [Read more…]

Posted by on 5 August 2012 at 1:02 PM

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Electrical Storm in the Gorge

I wasn’t watching the weather report, so I was caught by surprise this evening when an electrical storm blew through the gorge. Strangely, it was moving from east to west, which is uncommon with the almost constant west wind. Siena was incredibly excited by the frequent bolts of lightning and kept asking if she could watch the storm instead of going to bed. I let her stay up and watch me attempt to photograph the lightning strikes.

Siena’s comments during the “lights and funder storm”:

This is so exciting!
That. Was. Awesome!!
Was that the camera or the lighting?
Ooh that was a great one!
(and, to her Daddy, with camera on tripod) Didja get that hon?

Posted by on 20 July 2012 at 12:34 AM

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ARRL Field Day with the Radio Amateurs of the Gorge

RAG TentI passed my technician exam and became a HAM nine years ago while attending Cal Poly. A number of us were involved with the Cal Poly Picosatellite Project, which involved designing an orbital satellite capable of down-linking remote sensor data via HAM radio bands. Many of the engineers on the project became HAMs in order to communicate with this and other orbital satellites carrying amateur radio (OSCARs). Unfortunately, I ended up graduating before I could use the privileges my new license provided, and I haven’t been involved in amateur radio since then. That is, until a few months ago, when the local LDS church put on an emergency preparedness fair. Several classes were offered at the fair, including one that covered the importance of amateur radio in emergencies. This was all that was necessary to rekindle my interest in this hobby and begin preparing to upgrade my license to a general class. With my new found motivation I realized that I had still never been on the air, a fact I was somewhat embarrassed to admit to other HAMs. I decided to attend our local field day where I learned that my situation wasn’t uncommon.  I also had the opportunity, after nine years, to get on the air and make distant contacts.

Mobile ECCField day is an exercise organized by the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), held annually on the fourth weekend in June. It is considered the largest emergency preparedness exercise in North America, with over thirty thousand operators participating across all of the amateur radio bands. Field day starts on Friday when HAMs gather at a predetermined outdoor location to set up an emergency communications center (typically a tent), radio gear, antennas, power supplies and amenities (such as heaters, food, coolers, etc.). The exercise begins at 1800 UTC on Saturday and ends at 2059 UTC on Sunday, after which the HAMs pack up their gear and head home. During the exercise the objective is to make as many contacts as possible under field conditions. In addition to being an emergency communications exercise, it is also a contest, with points being awarded for each contact made. More points are awarded for distant contacts or for using lower power levels to transmit. Contacts can be made with voice communication or by utilizing digital radio modes and Morse code (CW). According to the ARRL web page, the objective of field day is: [Read more…]

Posted by on 24 June 2012 at 5:05 PM

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