Kiteless

For the moment I'm kiteless. But for once that's no bad thing. The trade winds have been howling, it's been spitting or dumping rain depending on the time of day, and it's uncomfortably cold for someone who's not used to wearing anything but shorts and a T-shirt. Nope! Not missing the kites just yet.

But it's giving me time to research locations for the trip. The problem isn't finding places to photograph. Quite the opposite. I'm having a hard time narrowing things down. There are just so many places to photograph where we're going! Even the one trip out to the boonies is going to yield some outstanding opportunities to photograph old farm equipment, decaying buildings, and stream beds. And with the serendipitous nature of KAP, I can't wait to find out what I didn't know about, and what hidden bounties the camera will reveal.

The real issue is that this isn't a KAP trip. It's a family trip. We're visiting the mainland in order to spend time with family we haven't seen in over five years. I can't spend the whole trip grabbing a kite line and staring at the sky. Nor would I want to. And it's not just that I'd disappoint them. I want to see them, too!

But I hope there's some time to indulge, and maybe share in the madness. Most of the places I want to go should be fun for everyone else as well. There are parks, gardens, museums, libraries (yes, libraries are photogenic some of the time), at least two college campuses, and numerous pieces of outdoor sculpture. If the weather is right there's even the opportunity to go hiking in a stream bed that abounds with dinosaur footprint fossils. What kid doesn't like dinosaurs?

The part that's got me down isn't so much what I can look forward to during the trip. It's what awaits when I get back. I know I live in one of the more photogenic parts of the world. Small islands in the middle of the Pacific tend to be that way. But I see far fewer opportunities to do KAP here than I do in the middle of a city on the mainland. I hope this is just my perception of reality rather than reality itself. I can change my perception. I want to change my perception if it leads to new opportunities to take pictures from the air. But what if I'm right and the vistas really are limited?

I'm not egotistical enough to believe I'll run out of things to photograph. That's simply not the nature of things. But will I still feel challenged enough to want to? Will I start to describe my own pictures as "yet another example of..."? Scary thoughts for a photographer, even an amateur.

What I hope is that the opposite happens. I photograph the buildings, the parks, the stream beds, the gardens, and everything else I can find while we're there, but realize by leaving this island I've lost the opportunity to photograph subjects I'm not even consciously thinking about. When I return, I hope I've made a new list of places to go and photographs to take: places here, where I live. I hope the trip is revitalizing rather than depressing. Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile the wind is still howling, the rain is still spitting, and my KAP gear is still sitting in a box, hopefully well on its way.

Tom

Gracious Professionalism

I'm volunteering to be a mentor for a FIRST Robotics team this year. In one of the communications that came from the team coordinator was a definition:

Gracious Professionalism - Respect for others demonstrated through actions; Responsible use of knowledge; Act with integrity and sensitivity; Give and receive constructive criticism graciously and professionally.

I like this. The team coordinator said the team is adopting it as their credo. I certainly hope to see it while I'm mentoring, and would like to see all the folks involved take it with them once the FIRST competition is over. It's a fine credo to have when working with others, especially if they're trying to follow it, too.

I could wish people would take this idea and apply it outside the field of robotics. I could wish, but I know I'm not likely to have it come true. One of the forums I'm on has a great number of strong personalities on it. Unfortunately, two of them seem to go head-to-head a lot more often than is really necessary. Even more unfortunately, the last time this happened gloves were thrown down and personal attacks were exchanged. Worse than that, the personal attacks didn't come from the two people having this "discussion", but rather from other members of the forum who were chiming in to voice their own viewpoint in what had become a very personal issue.

Gracious professionalism? Nope. Not a bit of it. Closer to kids fighting on the playground about whose toy car was cooler. It made me sick.

In the past I've left forums because of behavior like that. Not in an effort to prove a point, but just because that's not how I choose to spend my time. A wise fella once said there are only so many hours before you reach room temperature: use them wisely. Reading other people's dirty laundry being aired in a forum is just not how I choose to use my hours.

But this time I really don't have a choice. I need the advice of the people on the forum, including the two at the heart of that "discussion". All personal differences aside, they're both far more knowledgeable in the field than I am ever likely to be.

I'm reminded of the disagreement between Sandage and deVacoleurs regarding the Hubble constant. Two experts who knew more about astronomy than I will ever know in my lifetime, both at each other's throats, and neither willing to admit that the other's calculations are well within their own error bars. Personal attacks were the least of the problems, and in one instance I'm led to understand they each literally took a swing at the other. Gracious professionalism? Not in the least.

So I'll stay on, but at a cost. When the cost gets to be too high, I guess I'll choose to spend my hours a different way and live without their expert advice. I just wish it didn't have to be so.

"And if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!" -- Jayne Cobb

Tom

P.S. To anyone from that forum who wound up reading this: Before posting any vitriolic comments, please re-read that definition above. Then re-read that quote at the end. If you truly must leave a nasty comment, I'd like a palomino. I won't even eat it.

Last Flight Out

We're heading to the mainland in a week and a half. I'm bringing KAP gear, but after a couple of horror stories I'm not planning to bring it on the plane. So I'm mailing it to my family. But that means at least a week of transit, so the box has to go in the mail no later than Tuesday.

Considering the changes I've made in my rig in the past week, I wasn't comfortable shipping it until I had a chance to fly it at least once. With the weather pounding us over the last few days, I really wasn't sure it was going to happen. So Saturday morning I put my non-functional rig in my car to drive down to Kona so I could get a servo extension cable and actually plug in my shutter servo. The model shop was open, the cable was in stock, so after a couple of other errands, I went to the park.

Yet again I flew in the face of a storm. But this time, everything went right. I finally had a good KAP flight! It's been weeks! The changes to my rig worked beautifully, I got great stability, and the new shutter servo, though it jitters like crazy on the 6.0V battery, worked like a champ. The current capacity of the battery is good, and let me fly for well over an hour without even slowing down. I also got around to making a new charger cable for the NiMH battery packs, so this also heralds the end of the alligator-clip-on-bare-wire charging method. I'm stoked.

Sunday was a wash as we prepared for the trip. Lots of house cleaning, lots of last minute gotchas. I disassembled the rig this morning and boxed it up. I wound up using most of my stash of bubble wrap, but I'll re-use it for the return trip, so it's all good. I hope everything arrives ok!

Can't wait to get on the plane and follow my gear to the mainland.

Tom

Slowing Down

I ran the idea of the SG90 servo by Brooks, and he came up with two reasons not to do it. First, the BBGG is designed for a standard servo frame, so getting the gears to work with a mini or micro servo will be tough at best and impossible at worst. Also, he's not convinced the compromise is worth the savings in weight. So I'm either going to swap to an S3003 and the BBGG (+45g for the BBGG, -23g for the S3003, for a net gain of about 20g) or I'm going to quit messing around with my pan axis and leave it alone for good.

The shutter servo still looks like a win. I need to make a new mounting bracket for it, but it should just drop right in. Only problem is I'm sick at the moment, so I'm not making parts in the shop. Typing is about all I'm good for.

We're also being hit with some pretty nasty weather. I was supposed to go to the summit today, but we got weathered out. Just as well, considering I'm sick. I just hope I'm well for the weekend so I can try the newer, lighter KAP rig. But for now conditions are perfect to brew up a pot of tea, snuggle down in a nice warm quilt, curl up with a good book, and...

Hack my lungs out.

Such is life. Egads I hope I get well by Saturday. It's been two weeks without a decent flight.

Tom

Getting Lighter

The quest for a lighter KAP rig continues. I picked up a new gear set for the trashed S3003 servo from the local hobby shop, along with a 6V 2/3 AAA NiMH battery pack. The battery change alone shaves almost 60g off the rig. I also picked up some SG50 micro servos to use as shutter servos, which should knock another 30g off. That should bump my rig weight down from 700g to 610g, and should help the slight side-to-side imbalance I have at the moment. I hope to have the new hardware mounted in time for the weekend.

I also found the SG90 servo, a 9g mini-servo with pretty impressive torque numbers, might let me install a pan gear set from http://www.brooxes.com and potentially wind up with more available torque, close to the same weight as my existing setup, change the pan axis over to a solid steel bolt (which, after the pan servo mod fiasco would make me very very happy) and set my rig up for adding a KAPFeather from http://www.jonesairfoils.com when time and shop cash allows.

So my rig continues to evolve, I continue to shave weight, and maybe just maybe I'll be able to fly in Waipio Valley in the near future.

Tom