Material Distancing.

Thats a heck of a title!

What it really means is getting rid of stuff you have hung onto because you are sure to use it any minute now.... Minutes passed... Big purge this weekend! Going to back up the truck and start lofting things into the bed. As soon as its full it is run to the dump. Then back and again if its not all gone!

That and painting.. yes.. painting... Hopefully.. Need to brighten up the guest bath a bit from the years of strangely sea green. Its going back to retro black and white. Hall is going off white so that it carry's more light through it... Its a dark hallway what ever you do. If I had a friend that could put a light tube in my laundry room it would lighten up the whole thing.. and I would pay for that... I just would rather give the money to a friend than a large company... If you know of anyone trustworthy... Point.

Where was I..... hmmm.... Blah blah blah... Point.... Umm..... Door! I have a door... It swings the wrong way but its a door. Now I can close it when I have a conference call or other important thing going. It may slow em down. I cant use it for training because the whole area above it is open and you can hear all sort's of stuff over it.. Ah well it is a nice door... It closes and it locks.. though I have yet to lock it. Other than that I have had to move my right side table surface across my office... for now... I may change it.. I may leave it alone... I really do love moving things around just to see peoples faces.

I was talking today about our great hi wind landing on Saturday... About how we dragged and dragged all of five feet..... Well its very easy normally to drop a racer envelope.. and this time it dropped perfectly.. so fast that the chase crew missed us completely even though the road pointed at up directly....hahahaha... hide in plain sight... Well... never-mind... It was cool..

That's where we touched down...left a nice V divot then slid to a stop. Sweet smell of warm dry grass...

Launch into 14mph... Uuber Pibal. Mo waving at the smart people on the ground.

Mo takes over the level flying while I can do a quick look at how the system is settin in the air and take some pictures.

Right before our touchdown. Burners off and pushed up and out of the way.. Red line being hauled in. It takes a lot of hauling to get that top down and out of the way.

Outtakes from the 360 vid cam. Its going to be awesome using this during Fiesta.

I did test out the GoPro that stopped recording during the flight.. It did the same thing today... it starts up fine.. records for about five minutes then locks up.. the battery was over heating by the time I took it out of the case... Tomorrow I will try a new battery and see what happens.

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Fiesta Documents and passes past... Next year on the way.... I like collecting them but I will scan them in and dispatch them quickly as usual.

Patch for Andy for last years cross country steeple chase run to get to us out in the middle of a field. he did good... he is the Steeplechase Expert. Nothing like watching the crew lope out to you... Happened many times... I think we are going to have to do some sort of Patch thing...

Now the email SPAM I am getting is becoming impressive.. too bad they are hitting the wrong way and it is so unbelievable as to be hilarious.... Stupid people... Everyone of them should get charged major money for denial of service since I have to waste time deleting this crap.....

Banana!




I have to find my good flying hat....

Border land.

Down to one border again! Hahahaha... Daughter has moved out to her own place again. She is very happy to be where she makes the rules and does the dishes and cooks as she pleases.. I understand completely. You go girl! LOL. Well her and her little dog Ivy.... cackle cackle....

Some things got accomplished today but they weren't the things that needed to be done... Or... they were not on the imaginary list... well it was an imaginary list.. now its real.. now it has 51 things and now I really wish I hadn't made it. One thing at a time and like two things a day if I want it done by Fiesta.... Uh Oh!

I did spend some time going through Andy and my shots from the same day of last fiesta. One very cool edit and some odd differences in our cameras or their settings. Due to the over cast skies of that day last year it was either over blow things or underexpose things. I went under and Andy went over.

You can tell. Neither is a good thing but I wished there was a way other than trying for bracket shots while moving... which is very hard to do..... I dunno.. take what you get and try to get close... I used both photomatix and gimp to try and restore blown or dark sections and it kinda worked... kinda.

Adjusted with a touch to the color depth. See how overcast it was.

At points the wispys were blocking and reflecting everywhere giving you very washed out shots.

Then there was the haze which made it all the worse.

No sky at all if you wanted any color in the shadows.

This with the sun behind and out of the clouds.... Love all the power lines....NOT

The next are Andy shots. A slight maneuver on this one and a hit to the blue.

The river as it looks normally.. not green or yellow.

This shot I really liked. Andy did a great job of framing but the haze cause the black balloon to be a fuzzy white... So I took it and went up a step and then down two steps and mooshed it all together to get this...

The shot as taken

Up a step

Down two.

If it had been a less cloudy hazy day this would have been perfect the way it was shot.... But it was fun to work on it to see what would happen.

Must go work on that list so here is my banner and logo for the day...

Runnin outta time!

Always put your GPS behind you.

Or away from the instruments or where you cant read the Miles Per Hour... Especially if you are going faster than 10 MPH! HAH!

Remember how I was going to fly today.... Well I said I was hoping but that the winds were looking iffy.... and that we would probably go out and kick dirt but still set things up.... Wow.... I need to listen to myself more.

With the stalwart crew that showed up including a few Pilots it was a snap to get the balloon out.. sensor head sewed securely and the inflation started. The 360 cam was running fine but the two go pros were giving me a hassle. I have to either have them set before doing anything else of change their position.

Anyway(s)...we are up hot and ready to go and the crew get me taxied past a truck and up we go with the winds picking up quickly as we cleared the area. A good 10 plus right above the ground and 16 plus up around a thousand feet. So we are blasting along up there and deciding to find a good Westerly stream to get in.. which we found but it was thin... stayed in that. Mo got some burner time while I took a few pictures... Everyone went in different directions with Kurt finding the best high  ( 8000 plus ft ) location that took him directly West. We zoomed over Paradise and started a nice even 200 fpm descent which came out right over the edge of a wall and in the open space area... We hooked a good 90 plus degrees to the East and came over Unser about 20 feet up and dropping... Figured trying to ground track off the escarpment was a bad idea at now 13 mph so came in and evenly about five feet up ( while this is happening in fast order I noticed an open space officer right to the left and ahead of us.. he was coming closer as we were about to touch down in quite dry high grass ) I flipped both burners off and up out of the way and hauled on the red line. We hit nicely and skipped about five feet and laid the envelope down on the soft long grass as nicely as I could ask. No burning grass.. no problems.. Officer stopped..watched and drove on. Crew went past as we got out of the basket missing the whole thing...hahaha... They did come back and help a while later.... it was a good flight.. fast but good. Great confidence builder.

The balloon system coming out of Aerco and annual handled wonderfully... Lindstrand you know... Very tight.. very controlled and did exactly what I wanted when I needed it to. Good for me.

I was going to put some more shots from Andrew up tonight but am going to hold those till tomorrow but I will add his link in here at the bottom. Tonight I will post a few shots from today and some information as to why I shot them.... Lets go to the pictures Chet!

 Infamme.    Mo was on the burner at the time. he didn't get much time due to the speed but he can stick a level very well. I took this shot to show you the force of the propane being ejected via the nozzles in the burner... look through the air ports on the side... that's busting arse propane getting torched to 15,000,000 Btu's of glorious heat.You can also see all three of my control lines coming down just like they are supposed to... Black, Red, Green. Or as I like.

14 MPH!!!?!    Taken snapshot on our ascent and we are already going 14 mph per the GPS. Gotta locate this where I cant see the speed unless I REALLY want to know. LOL.

Surprisingly Pibal.    Last time we flew it seemed we were in slow motion on launching. Today complete opposite and we were in the air quickly leaving our friends behind. They go up and got out even after seeing my swift departure from their midst. I was the PIBAL! ( Invader Zim outtake ).

Phred says I should name this Polished Prairie..... Hmmm..... It works.    Had to take the shot as it was so contrasting. Very very dry tall grasses. Burners were cooling and no fire anywhere as I shut them off at ten feet. They are resting!

Yvette takes the bush..OUT!     Puff goes for the tree and gets a good munch.    It was fun to watch her whole descent and skip and tree visit. As Ted said.. the basket smells so nice now. ":O)

Posing!    When you have a balloon that is posing .. you take that shot. I took that shot. Nice little pennants on this one.

Relax and lay back.....   It was a good run. More races to go. The first flight of Patturns Highperactive stopped in near the same place.. probably farther East but darn close. Funny that. PH is out and settled. Had to pull the crown to the middle to get her to lay completely out. GoPros standing there and the 360 hanging out.

 One GoPro kept shutting off. Firmware updated.. Testing soon. The other got good video and the 360 picked up everything... Coming over the street lights looked very quick. Two rabbits flushed.

Chase Crew Arriving!    They made it and found us just off the road. We did get some excited views as we went over the road. ... wah hooooooo

Videos are dumped but will wait till I have time to mess with them.. I have one for Eric that has to be done still first. Soon... soon......

I was trying to remember to post the Pop goes the weasel words here but I kept forgetting.. and this is going to be a long post tonight... The guy who looked up the real words then wrote a nice blog bit on it was great.. there were a few very good blogs post that night.. his was great... So here is the link and the poem....

Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the city road,
In and out of the Eagle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel. 

Every night when I get home
The monkey's on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a ball of thread
Another for a needle
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.

I have sung this as a child in England but never thought about the words as with Ring Around The Rosey..

http://www.neatorama.com/2015/08/27/Pop-Goes-the-Weasel-What-Does-It-Really-Mean/

Worth the read.

Now Andrews Zenfolio webwsite where you can see what him and Kelley get up to and his great Fiesta shots too.

http://kanda.zenfolio.com/

They do have some great adventures.

Now.. the Banner for the day and logo.....

I called today Adrenalin Daze!

What a day!

Andrews View

I have been sitting upon a cache of photographs that I totally forgot I had. Andy shot these during the 2014 Fiesta and they have sat on my drive. He was in town the other day and he gave his permission to use them.... Umm.. bad idea! I am.. and I diddled with them a bit.. Sorry.. I couldn't help it. Awesome shots and this is only the tip of the iceberg really. Andrew Dawdy's shots used in this evenings blog.

We both got this shot but he had the better spot in the basket.. next time Andy you get the left side. heh! The ponds were so nice below us. Too bad the damn light was buggy which keeps giving off bad light on the lily pads or far too dark on the water. Same happened to my shots.

Here are a few I grabbed that I liked because each one was where I was too busy to get the shot and Andy got it nicely. I will explain on each shot. There are many good things about being a crew member.

Ripples after a smooth splash and dash.. I rather like settling onto the waters surface and drifting along leaving a light wake... but a good BAWOOSH is fun too.

BAWOOSH! into and under and up... Andy got a good three set of this balloon kicking the silt up.

GATORS>> GATORS everywhere!!! Okay.. KAYAKS>> KAYAKS everywhere!!!! LOL... So much fun to visit with these guys.

ZK cutting through the trees on the edge of the river....or maybe over.. I cant tell... Eric has been know to play in both.

Dive Bomber! Andy got quite a few of this balloon crashing down against us from way above... Not a comfortable feeling when you are used as a brake... he still missed the river..and found a tree I think I remember...

Auto focus gets the frame instead of our uncomfortably close visitor. Balloons rubbing against each other happens all the time. Having one try to go through your side is not nice.

Here is a great shot of a comfortable rubbing... Or Kiss..... We cam along to this balloon.. he was at the same height as we were but we were both on intersecting courses... very funny that... we bumped along for quite a while.. both maintaining our height so that we didn't get wicker near envelope.. it worked but were we stayed in the slight wind stream he popped up to look for something better.. did a good job on disengaging too. Good Pilot.

Our eventual landing spot... That is a group of Rainbow Ryder passengers and crew plus the Pilot is there somewhere too... We were heading directly towards them and that fine table with champaign and orange juice... darned if we didn't get nudged off at the last minute and their crew caught us and set us nicely down. It was much fun.

I was working to keep up in that little air stream so camera was put away... lucky Andy. more to come and tomorrow I will put Andy's Photography site address up. I have mislaid it so I have to ask for it again.

35 days to go.. Tomorrow out to check everything out and then hopefully fly. Winds look like garbage but we will still go out since I have to sew my sensor back in.... fun times coming.

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 Zoom!

Activity

What traffic? Yeah.. I'm joking! Got stuck behind a larger truck than mine.. no really.. taller.... who was in the fast lane slamming on his brakes all the time... I was about three or four car lengths back after the first freak tap.. I expect he was on the cell hone because he was very erratic. Gotta love those laws everyone follows all the time cause their laws.. yeah Wilber.

At least I didn't get busted speeding on the river.... okay... don't count vertical speed okay! Sheesh!

As I cruised through the Fiesta files from last year I found a few more that I didn't know where there.. Yes.. I saw then .. as very small pictures so I just passed over them... but going back and with the new cleaning software they were worth a second look.. and a first showing.... below below....


One of my favorite shapes...

 Its all potential! What a fun shape to fly...

I found another kayak shot... sadly the focal length seems to be off so all the faces are soft. I will pop a crop in below... I cant wait till this yeah.. hoping to meet up with a lot of Kayakers....Maybe visit.. have tea...

Buddies!!! We went to the river.. splashed.. then went right back the way we came ( almost ) me and my friend here shared the space, envelope to envelope for quite a while as we worked our way back South East. I made it nicely to the arms of a Rainbow Ryders crew right off Fiesta field. A good day.

 Sundagger and ZK pace us as we return.... Rocking those low level breezes.

Last crop shot...wish it was fully in focus!

We are planning on flying from the field everyday.. which give good chances of getting to the river... Must ask what time the kayaks usually get down where we can hang out and I will lolly gag around until they do... What fun.

Facebook banner and logo for the day.... yup.. way too much fun with this last night... and I an having fun with the Highperactivity poster...

I believe the crew is selling the ship... if you have ever wanted your own pirate ship... now is your chance...

http://www.aerostatz.com/RichardsonSHIP.html

Is there a theme to my madness on the posters... .yes.. yes there is....

and I do bite!

Oh.. have to post this!! Why people.. why?