Another Quadracopter For Christmas

CX-10

Environment For Flight
Please try in the spacious indoor, and ensure that no obstacles, animals in the surrounding crowd

If you remember last year I bought a Micro Drone 2 for my Christmas gift. Turns out I didn’t get it until late January. And then my inept flying talents led to numerous crashes and shortening its life span to about one week.

This year the weekend before Thanksgiving the folks at Stack Social were offering the same Micro Drone 2 again. I took one look at it and said, “I’m not falling for that again.” A couple days later I noticed they offered a Nano Drone without a camera for 50% off, bringing it down to a mere $35. I thought about that a bit and decided not to try that one either.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I changed my mind and thought I should go for the cheaper, smaller one, because even though I didn’t get the Micro Drone flying with any regularity, it sure was a heck of a lot of fun. When I went to the Stack Social site the offer was sold out. Rats.

I highlighted the name of the thing, googled it and came back with a bunch of hits. Found one nearly exactly like it (different logo) on Amazon for $22 shipped! It arrived Monday and I’ve been monkeying with it ever since.

Began To Take Off
Boot process right boot sequence is as follows:
1. Will hit the lowest throttle joy stick throttle
2. Open the aircraft power supply, the aircraft on a level surface, motionless. Vehicle lights flashing.
3. Open the remote control power supply, remote control issue “DAILY DOUBLE” sound, then the throttle lever (Figure 2) hit the highest, issued a “GOD” the sound of the throttle lever to hit the lowest (Figure 3) indicates the success of the code. Meanwhile aircraft lights stop flashing.

I even took it to work yesterday and let several people fly (or try to fly) it around our office area. One fellow was really good with it because of past RC flying experience and he made me extremely jealous. Needless to say I sent out the link to everyone in the place, with so far one confirmed order being placed. I took it up front and showed a few people there too and with the price of these things I bet there will be a few more in stockings this year.

The thing has some trimming capabilities and it did fly pretty straight right out of the box, but my constant banging into walls and ceilings have now made it essential to get it trimmed before each flight.

Accelerator Alignment
When the flight is not smooth or fast drift in one direction, the need to calibrate the accelerometer.
1. Aircraft and remote control of the code, the vehicle on a level surface.
2. The sensitivity settings in the advanced mode and push the throttle to the lowest position.
3. After the throttle / rudder control lever to the lower left comer, elevator /aileron control lever to the left corner, then the aircraft lights flash for 1-2 seconds, the calibration was successful.

This evening in the fading daylight I took it out in the front yard with a fully charged battery and flew it around until there wasn’t enough juice left to get it off the ground. Actual flight time maybe 10 minutes, but I was out there twice that long picking it up out of the leaves after augering back to earth.

Operation And Control
Caution: Avoid out of control, in control of four-axis aircraft needs to always be careful when moving slowly operate the remote control, remote control aircraft lost a bit of momentum in the process, so you can add a little extra gas to make micro four-axis flight exercises to maintain a certain height.

Heck I’ve half the cost of the thing in fun, just trying to decipher what the instructions actually mean…

Purple Whales Playoff Bound

 

 

The folks in the gray shaded blocks are in the playoffs. The top team in each Division gets a Bye Week to “rest” their players while the next two in line play this weekend to see who gets to play the top seed next week for the Division Championship. I think I’m going to have to get lucky to win the next three weeks and be a repeat League Champion.

Here is the text of the email I sent out to the league owners today:

All,
We had an exciting last weekend of the season, 4 teams had already clinched playoff spots, but there were 5 teams fighting for the last two openings.

In the East Division the Legion of Boom and the Swamp Rats SR had the same record and they were playing each other, so the winner was guaranteed entry into the playoffs. Naturally the game ended in a tie… But by virtue of winning the earlier match up, the Boomers punched their ticket to the post season and the Rats were left to scurry back into the alley from which they came until next year.

In the West Division the top two teams were already in the playoffs and the bottom team was not going to get in no matter what, so that left three teams with their post season hopes on the line. If Team Gregory won they would be in no matter what the other two did, so naturally they lost. With the Gregories loss had Team Wrangler won, they would have been in, so naturally they lost (by one point.) The Meatheads needed a win to advance and by some fluke they did win, but it wasn’t enough. The Meaty Boys ended up with the same record as Team Gregory, but because of their head to head record, Team Gregory moves on to the playoffs. The two teams had split the season series, In the first game the North Augusta Meatheads won 76-51 and in the second game Team Gregory won by a score of 77-51 there by making the playoffs by One Point!

For those of you who didn’t make the playoffs, keep on playing, because it is not just the overall playoff champion who takes home a physical trophy, there is the coveted “Best of the Rest” or the “I Might Not Be Very Good, But I’m Better Than You” statuette up for grabs.

—
Brian Bogardus
Commissioner
End Zone Entourage FFL
Owner/Director of Player & Personnel
Purple Whales

Kinda Hoping December Would Be Better

November wasn’t really a banner month around here, early on it was big ways as we lost a member of the family and 10 days later a good friend. More recently in little ways. Last Wednesday while washing clothes in preparation for the trip to Hendersonville, I noticed a big wet spot underneath the water heater that resides in the laundry room. Sunday afternoon the monitor on the PC started to flicker blue tinting in the lower left corner that grew to encompass 75% of the screen. We caught an Early Cyber Monday Sale and picked up a 23.6″ Samsung monitor for $120, but nobody had any Black Friday deals on water heaters though.

While December has got to be better, but it got off to an inauspicious start. Tonight while chewing a hamburger I bit on something hard, thought at first it might have been a bit of bone, but upon further review it turned out to be a piece of the lower right mandibular second molar. For the past few months I had an occasional pain on the right side when chewing, but never could pinpoint whether it was upper or lower and it was never regular enough to worry about. On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about how to use up that last $500 we had in flex spending anymore.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1434

52,0000 Snowflakes

Somewhere just south of Spartanburg, with Donna at the wheel, the Purple Whale swam past the 52,000 mile mark.

We are up in Hendersonville today at the SMH to have turkey dinner with my sister, her husband and my brother Paul who is down from Connecticut. As we drove the last couple miles up to the house and for a while after arrival it was snowing lightly, well not really snowing, not even flurrying, more like about 52,000 randomly spaced snowflakes drifting down over the space of an hour.

Like we did a couple of years ago, we had a pot luck Thanksgiving meal at the Clubhouse of Diane & Allen’s gated community. There are about 100 folks eating in one big ol’ room, in the middle of which are 8 folding tables arranged in a cross that are piled high with food. This arrangement segments the room into four quadrants of three or four tables each. For the first pass at the food we are instructed to only select from our L-shaped serving area and to go in a predetermined direction. To eliminate any long lines the social director calls out table numbers one at a time for each quadrant.

Some people, move way too slow, fill their plates from the wrong direction and/or reach across over to the other tables, but it mostly works OK. It sure is a darn sight better than letting everyone loose at the same time and to go wherever they think the best looking food items are.

146,000 Blue Pixels

Next Miata 2

Thursday, when we got in the Emperor to drive to work, I noticed the odometer read 146034. Hmmm…, we had driven to work in the Miata on Wednesday, so subtract those 13 miles and you still end up with 146,021. That means we must have gone over the 146,00 milestone sometime last Saturday when we took the MMC on a 50 mile drive after last Saturday’s breakfast. Just didn’t notice.

I posted yesterday’s image of a blue next gen Miata over on the Miata Forum and it has garnered a few responses. One of which wondered how it might look with a lighter background. Far be it for me to deprive the public of what it wants.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1432

The Emperor’s Successor?

Next Miata

Two month’s ago Mazda officially unveiled the next generation Miata (MX-5/Roadster) to the world. It was showed in a beautiful metallic shade of red called Soul Red. Yesterday at the LA Auto Show they showed the new car in Pearl White*.

In 1989 when the Miata was first introduced to the world it came in only single stage non-clear coated paint. Nowadays you would be hard pressed to find a non-metallic paint on any car at any price point. That 1990 car was only available in three colors; red, white & blue. So now that we’ve seen the car in red and white, the only thing left is to show us the car in a metallic version of that first blue.

For your viewing pleasure I have “photoshopped” a representation above. As an added bonus I have removed the stock wheels Mazda has been showing the car with and added the current wheels I have on the Emperor. Just a thought exercise mind you.

*Miata Forum investigative journalism at its finest, turned up that the Pearl White car is just the previous Soul Red car that has been repainted.

Bye Mark

MarkOn Friday October 10th mid-morning, cubicle neighbor and buddy Mark got the call, his Mom had been in hospice in Greenwood for the last week and the end was near. She passed away that evening. I never did get to give him my condolences because I was leaving for Florida for a week the next morning to help Donna take care of her sister.

On my way into work on Monday the 20th, while walking through the parking lot, I was met by the Tool Crib Attendant, Angie, who asked if I had heard about Mark. I said, “Sure, his Mom passed away last week.” “Nooo!,” she said, “Mark had a heart attack.” “%*&!#, when?” “Saturday.”

After his Mom’s funeral, his Dad really didn’t want to be alone in the house, so Mark took the rest of the week off to be with him and help him transition. On Saturday Mark told his Dad he was going to go deer hunting. He shot a deer and as he was dragging it out of the woods he became very short of breath, so much so that he had to sit down. Realizing he was in trouble he called his wife on his cell phone. While on the line with Mark she used the house phone to call his Dad to get him to call 911 because he knew where Mark was.

When they got Mark to the hospital it was determined that he had a blockage in the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery (AKA, the Widow Maker.) When the doctors tried to place a stent there, it tried to live up to its name. They had to shock Mark 10 times to get his heart beating on its own again. The next three days were spent in ICU. We were getting daily updates from his wife Susan via text and he was moved to a regular room, but she asked that we not visit because he was still so weak.

The following week we were told he was improving, but he had a damage heart valve, that they were hopeful would heal over time. There was some fluid on his lungs, but he might get to go home on Thursday. Then, Mark was coming home on Friday. Then it got moved to Saturday, but Saturday was the day Donna and I were headed to Florida, so we would have to wait until we got back before we could go see him.

Midweek in Florida we texted for an update from a coworker and were informed that Mark had gone home from the hospital on Sunday the 2nd. On our way back from Florida the following Saturday, Donna texted Susan and said we’d be practically driving right by their house in the afternoon, could we stop in briefly to say hello? She texted back, “We’re at SELF.” (the hospital in Greenwood.) Donna texted back, “We’ll visit tomorrow.”

Donna and I drove up and spent around an hour visiting. He was watching the Buffalo-Miami football game with the fantasy football app open on his tablet. Mark told us about the Saturday of the heart attack. We got the story about how he did get to go home last Sunday, the covering cardiologist turned him lose, but at the follow up appointment on Wednesday his primary cardiologist put him right back in the hospital. Mark was still getting winded walking 25 feet; there was still fluid in his lungs. They were giving him inhalable steroids to help clear his lungs and they were hopeful that he would get to go home this week. As we left we said see you later then.

We never did. Tuesday Mark was back in the ICU and he died there on Thursday morning. A week ago today, twenty-five days after rearing her ugly head, the widow maker won.