I stopped downtown yesterday on my way home from work to take a few shots with my fisheye lens and here a few of the passable ones that I came up with. As always click the pics for the full hi-res version.
As usual the Tulsa Gluedobbers put on a great event with their 60th annual Heatwave In The Heartland. Here are just a few of the highlights that I was able to capture.
These are not some of my best shots, they are a bit out of focus, but they do show off the teapot asterism rather well. The teapot lies to the south in our night sky right now, and is always quite low on the horizon. Its in one of the brightest spots in our milky way galaxy because it’s in the general direction of our galactic center so it makes for some good photographic opportunities with lots of nebulae and star clusters nearby.
What is an asterism you ask? Well its a small grouping of stars that is not an officially recognized constellation. Do you know any other asterisms? Well, One of the most famous ones is the Big Dipper. That’s right the Big Dipper is NOT a constellation it’s actually a part of the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear.
How is this not on the evening news and well, just all over the media? We are going back to the moon guys! Seriously, I can’t wait until we have bots and various other equipment crawling all over the moon, checking stuff out and getting things ready for our eventual manned mars missions.
After some motor problems a few weeks ago Jeff had to put a new tail wheel on his pulse and this is the first flight since the change. At the end of this video you get to see Jeff make one sweet dead-stick landing made on Monroe’s High-wing Trainer.
Jeff and I both bought one of these at the Hobby Lobby Black Friday sale way back in November. We got really good deals on them but they just kind of got set aside for a while. I have to say this is a fun plane to fly and its my first shot at a ducted fan. (all stock HL gear and a 2250 3cell LiPo) On the second flight with the Soarjet I actually sat down to fly. It’s going to be a great lazy day flier.
Jeff and I have been fortune enough to make friends with most of the pilots at our local airport and every so often they offer to take us up for a ride. Anyway, while we were out flying Friday evening Mark, the owner of a kick ass yellow Tri-Pacer stopped by and ask if we wanted to go up. It was Jeff’s turn, I had already been up with Bill the owner of the Cessna you will see take off late in the video. Anyhow here is the video for you to check out.
Thanks go out to all of the pilots at NMA for puttin up with us and also to Gov’t Mule for making such killer tunes and allowing the Tapers to do what they do…that’s right folks, this one has a really groovy soundtrack.
Steve and Tony came up for some after work flying earlier in the week and they brought along a creation that Tony designed from the carcass of an old cheap foam plane that “just never flew very well” I gotta say that after the addition of a couple brushed ducted fans Steve had laying around it has found new life.
I thought I would share one of the videos that Jeff shot of me flying this last summer and if all goes well this will be posted on the airplane manufacturers website. The guys from Cermark just got really lucky that this was one of the flights when I didn’t crash. How kewl is that?
Never fear though, there are plenty of these that I do crash in and I will post them periodically for your amusement. Plus Jeff is a really good videographer so he catches most, if not all of the destruction.
Click here for the Cermark website and here to see the video once there just click the media tab.
Ok here’s the thing, I am for anything that keeps our soldiers safe and out of harms way but I’m not sure these won’t become the new land mines that will take a long time to clean up after the conflicts are over and done. I don’t think these are in service yet, but who knows really, we just have to hope that they (the powers that be) will have a means of completely destroying or collecting these things as soon as the missions is completed. The last thing we need is some kid or other innocent getting harmed by the cute little robo-bug-killing machine that was accidentally left behind after his neighborhood was destroyed.
Kewl new feature alert: if you click the thumbnails below you get to see the images full size.
