Moving beyond Picasa

Picasa, the free photo editing program from the kind (yet sometimes somewhat misguided) folks at Google is the tool I use to improve many of the photos posted here on the blog. It is quick and easy to use to edit the framing of the picture (or ‘cropping’ in the vernacular), remove unwanted haze, brighten up or darken the overall picture, etc. It’s that last feature that I use a lot; many of my pictures seem too dark when viewed on the screen, so I lighten them up in Picasa before posting. The weakness of Picasa as compared to more sophisticated (yet pricey – there’s always a trade-off) tools like Photoshop is that it lightens the entire image. Every now and then, I have an image that I’d like to lighten only part of.

Consider this picture that I shot at Vinton County:

I want to lighten up the instrument panel, but I don’t want to wash out the nice blue sky. Tonight I decided to see if I could doi just that using a very complex, yet still free, photo editing package called The GIMP. Here’s the result:

Can you see the difference? It’s actually too light now, which comes from having done the editing on my ancient beater PC which has an old worn out monitor on it. The monitor is perennially too dark and not very useful for that kind of work, but the concept seems sound. You can also see what looks like a high water line on the struts; that comes from having the image magnified beyond the confines of the small-ish 17″ screen of the monitor.

The clock, having finally made the inarguable case that it is, in fact, Co-pilot Egg’s bedtime, and thus taking my side in the eternal “whose turn is it to use the good computer” battle, I took another quick shot at it. I didn’t take a lot of time in making the selection absolutely perfect, mostly because my bedtime isn’t all that far removed from Egg’s. You can see the sloppiness in where I selected the region to lighten if you click for the larger version and look closely at the left edge of the second strut from the right:

The original:

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Pre-Gathering of Mustangs and Legends

Well, because of an unfortunate work commitment, I am going to be unable to attend The Gathering of Mustangs & Legends, billed as “A Once in a Lifetime Aviation Celebration.” It’s this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Rickenbacker Air Force Base, which is an easy 20 minute drive from my house. Over 100 P-51s are expected, along with an airshow that will rival those that they have at Oshkosh every year. In fact, in one big respect this airshow will exceed the Oshkosh standard: the Air Force Thunderbirds will be performing. But, I won’t be there.

That said, my friend Arnett Howard, a local professional musician, pilot, and history buff has spent quite a bit of time recently researching the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and their three year period of being based at Rickenbacker (nee Lockbourne) AFB. He has put together a nice photo display which will be included in the exhibit showing the history of the air base. Even though my weekend is fully committed to work, I was able to get away from the office today to help Arnett deliver his display to the base and help set it up.

There were a handful of airplanes already there, so I at least got to see a dozen or so of the 100+ Mustangs that will be flying in. Also, Arnett is friends with one of the airshow performers, and it just happens to be a performer that I’ve known about and seen perform many times. Her name is Patty Wagstaff, and although she doesn’t know it, our history goes way back.

Early in her scholastic career, Co-pilot Egg attended a school that had woefully obsolete ideas concerning what females can and cannot do in modern society. To combat the gender-typing that the school seemed to feel appropriate in imbuing in my child, I used Ms. Wagstaff as a counter example. Egg saw Patty perform at the 2004 Dayton Airshow, and came away suitably impressed. Even back when we had the Tampico, steep banks and pushovers that would lift her against the seat belt were called “Wagstaffs” or ‘P-Wags.”

Earlier this year, Egg and I flew to Burke-Lakefront, where they have a “Women in Aviation” museum set up in the terminal. Part of their collection is a Patty Wagstaff display, including one of her flight suits. I asked Egg to pose in front of the display for a picture. You may remember the somewhat disappointing result, and what I said about it at the time:

Grrr, she’s going to pay for that. I’m going to do exactly what I had hoped to do with that picture, which is to get Patty to autograph it. That’ll learn her!

Well, that’s exactly what I did! In addition to getting the picture (and my hat, only the 2nd autograph I’ve asked for in my entire life, despite having had the opportunities of asking such luminaries as Chuck Yeager, Jack Nicklaus, and George “Norm” Wendt. The only other autograph I’ve requested and received was from Leo Loudenslager) autographed (“To Erika, Let’s Go Flying. Patty Wagstaff”), we spent a few minutes talking about flying, kids, and flying with kids. I shared with her the story of using her as a positive example for Egg as to what women can do in today’s world, and she told me that that was a very gratifying thing to hear.

So, without further bloviating, here’s what you really want to see: the pictures I took today. As always, click on the picture to see a larger version:

Patty’s other plane. Everyone should have (access to) at least one P-51!

Ugh! Forgot to suck in the gut!!

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Indian Summer

Are you still allowed to say Indian Summer? Who knows anymore. If we’re going to have to live this politically correct lifestyle, I wish they’d publish a guide book. Anyway, it’s past mid-September and we still have summer-like weather, so I’m going to call it Indian Summer. Clear sky, no wind, and a nice 80-some degrees. This is perfect flying weather, and if you need further evidence of that, you’d have only needed to see the crowd at Urbana for breakfast this morning. Rick was headed in the same direction, so I handed him my camera to take a few shots along the way:

The light wasn’t terrific, but I think they turned out well enough. After he took a few shots for me, I forged on ahead with the hopes of reserving a place to sit and eat. I dialed in the AWOS and heard a report of winds from due east at 3 knots, so assumed a landing on runway 2. While still a few miles out, I dialed in the Unicom and heard that the prevailing traffic was using 20, rather than 2. I didn’t figure a wind of 3 knots was worth an argument with those that had arrived before me, so I set up to enter a left downwind to 20. The slight tailwind on landing extended my flare a wee bit, and I had to use a little more brake than usual to make the first turn-off, but the landing itself was ok.

After breakfast, I again used runway 20 and continued on to the west for my ultimate destination of Darke Co./Versailles. I had packed my Beretta NEOS .22 plinking pistol in case my brother was in the mood to do a little shooting on his range, but before heading up to his farm I decided to take a walk along the Greenville Creek:

It’s been pretty drought-like this summer, so the water level is very low. These guys did a lot more walking than they did boating:

They had apparently brought along sufficient quantities of a fermented, hop-based brew to keep their moods buoyant, if not their boats, so they seemed to be enjoying their walk.

As I walked across the bridge on Mill Rd., I noticed that some local type had taken a distinct dislike to the ‘O’ on this sign:

Just across the bridge, I found this John Deere parked off to the side in a most photogenic manner:

Mill Rd. dead ends into Hahn Rd., and a little bit down Hahn Rd. you come to a very old cemetery:

Walking back towards my brother’s place, I saw a lot of little butterflies. They all seemed kind of busy, but this one held still long enough for me to take his picture:

Having matriculated in the Engineering College, I never had the benefit of any botany classes. I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but it caught me eye:

The soybean fields are host to a lot more than soybean plants:

My brother set up his range and I unpacked my NEOS:

We each had a couple of targets to shoot at. I made the mistake of choosing the barrel to the right of my brother’s, so had the distraction of being periodically sprayed with spent brass:

From 25′, I managed to hit my target a few times:

I found one of my spent bullets; there’s not much left of them after hitting that thick steel:

When we were done with the pistols at the 25′ range, we pulled back to 425′ and got out his .17 rifle:

The targets seem pretty small from 425′:

At 425′ I didn’t expect to hit a damned thing, but I actually hit 6 out of 6:

The flight back was a bit choppier, but even at 3500′ it turned out that some of the more over-achieving bugs were still out and about:

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"An endless series of tasks, each more onerous than the last"

I imagine any large project feels like that now and then, but then along comes a point in the process where it all looks like it’s worthwhile. Behold the kayak, which is now 2/3s of a fiberglass boat:

The next step, the step that will make it 100% a fiberglass boat, is to glass the top. That will hopefully be easier than glassing the bottom was. I required some help with glassing the bottom since it involved working with long lengths of the glass cloth, and the cloth just loves to snag itself on any piece of the boat it can find to give it purchase. With two, it’s a lot easier to get it stretched out without tearing it up. RickS, who should have been working on his airplane, graciously offered up some of his time to help me get the glass on. He even stayed long enough to help apply the first layer of epoxy, which is a pretty nasty job.

At the bow and stern of the boat, the tendency for the cloth to bunch up and make unsightly wrinkles is exacerbated by the fact that you have three layers of cloth to soak the epoxy through. The glass is layed on triple-thick in these areas because they can be expected to see rough use in the water. Also difficult is cutting the glass cloth to fit; the scissors get dull almost immediately and don’t give a very clean cut. This results in fibers wanting to come out of the weave of the glass and stick to whatever it is you’re using to spread the epoxy. Since the glass is actually one very, very, VERY long single fiber, you really don’t want that to happen. You end up with a very ugly seam in these areas, which I hope, hope, HOPE can be sanded out:

It’s had three coats of epoxy now in order to fill the weave of the cloth. It will get an overall sanding when the top has also been clothed and had three coats of epoxy, but I’m going to try to sand those seams smooth before I flip the boat and add the top layer of glass.

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Kayak sanding

Last night was the first full sanding of the kayak. The next step is glassing the whole thing, so this is the last chance to remove any building indiscretions, and depending on what kind of day you’re having, introduce new ones. The Harbor Freight orbital sander make short work of the job using 150 grit paper. The manual suggested 120 grit, but I was afraid I’d sand through the top layer of the plywood and leave an ugly black area. I saw that happen on a guy’s build blog, and discretion being the better part and all that, I went with the less coarse paper.

Once the sanding was done, I went ahead and epoxied the Heron veneer on the top of the deck. Scary, that.

Here’s the latest picture:

Looks like a boat, doesn’t it?

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Vinton Co. 2007

My rider for today unfortunately had to cancel, but I have to say that he did it exactly right. He called right on the briefed 0830 final check to let me know that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. Having endured the frustration of the silent cancellation before, I sure appreciated that he called to let me know.

As I pulled up at the hangar, Guy was busy airing up his tires for a flight. He only had time for a few trips around the pattern due to a family commitment, but I figured that as long as he was taking off anyway and heading basically the same direction I was going to be going, we might as well join up for a couple of minutes of formation practice for me, and a nice air-to-air picture for him. We briefed a straight out departure from 22 to an altitude of 3500′, and a frequency join up on 122.85. It was nice and smooth, and he courteously held his speed down to a sedate 100 mph (what? That’s all he can do anyway?? Oh well, ’tis the thought that counts) while I joined on his right wing:

As I approached the Vinton Co. area I heard that they were landing on runway 9. Normally when approaching from the northwest, I would have set myself up for a direct entry into the left base for runway 9, but this is a pretty well attended fly-in and I suspected that flying a fuller pattern would be much safer:

To do that, I broke away from the direct-to line about 8 miles out and positioned myself 5 miles due north of the field. That would allow me to enter left downwind midfield, which is where any other planes already in the pattern would expect me:

I was just getting ready to key the mike and declare myself as “5 miles north, inbound left traffic to runway niner,” when someone else keyed-up and announced exactly the same thing. I love it when a plan falls apart – now I cleverly put myself in the situation of being in essentially the same piece of air as someone else that I couldn’t see. He told me that he was down at 2500′ descending to pattern altitude, and I was still up at 3500′, so there was no immediate danger. I still had 155 knots going, so it didn’t take long at all until I had to start down or shoot right over the airport.

I still didn’t see the other plane, but I figured that it was unlikely that he was going as fast as me (RV ego, hard at work!), so after going a couple miles further from the point where we had been equidistant from the airport, I figured I’d be well in front of him. Having done that didn’t leave me with a whole lot of time or distance to “go down and slow down,” to patter altitude, though, and I was still a little nervous about descending my low-wing airplane into a presumably occupied space that I couldn’t see because of my very opaque wing.

This is the perfect occasion to use a slip, whereby I put in a bunch of left aileron and a whole boot full of right rudder. This accomplishes two things: I can come down very quickly without gaining unwanted airspeed, and it drops the left wing out of my view so I can see below me so as to avoid descending right onto him. Sure enough, as I got to the entry point of the pattern I saw him behind and below me. A quick 270 degree turn positioned me perfectly behind him on the left downwind.

It was early enough that there weren’t a whole lot of witnesses for my landing, which is too bad this time (normally it’s a good thing) since it was actually a pretty good landing for the conditions, the conditions being a downhill runway that caused me to flare and flare and flare, wondering if I was ever going to find the damned runway. The eventual touchdown was pretty good, though.

Once parked, I spent a couple of hours walking around taking pictures of planes that were already there, and some of the arrivals as they occurred:

Because I had afternoon plans, I didn’t want to get caught by the runway closure for the air show again like I did last year, so I saddled up to head home at about 11:30. It was getting pretty crowded by that time, as you can see from the departure shot:

Even with the 10 or 15 minute wait to get out between the nearly constant stream of arrivals it turned out that 11:30 was a lot sooner than I really needed to go, of course, but I was anxious to get back so I’d be ready for the early afternoon ride I had promised to a first-timer. Good landing back at Bolton, making me two for two for the day so far, and now I’m just waiting for the next rider to call.

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A promising start to the day

The weather yesterday was beautiful, albeit chilly enough to make a statement: summer’s done, and you better enjoy the fall, because the dreaded winter months are right around the corner. No flying yesterday, though, between going to the Arts Festival to see if any of my pictures won anything (they didn’t) and to watch the Bucks play my favorite PAC-10 team (I LOVE Huskies! Although… they’re pretty high maintenance dogs, in my experience, and are better suited for admiration from afar rather than living with one.).

We watched the parade at the Festival, and as usual my favorite parts were the high school marching bands and the Jazzercise float or as I call it, “Dancing Spandex on Parade.”

As for the football, The Bucks won, but it was the second half before I could stop concatenating “You’re our only hope!” to every utterance of “Come on defense!” I must have used 20 various inflections on that statement in the first quarter, too.

Flying today, though. It’s always scary to miss a good flying day because you never know if the next day will be an adequate replacement. The “weather out the window” report looks promising, though:

I finally broke down and read up on a few things in the instruction manual for my camera, chief amongst them being how to keep the flash from popping up of its own accord so I could take pictures like that. I mean really, the thing was acting like a teenage boy at a cheerleader competition. No control whatsoever. I found the appropriate menu setting somewhere slightly south of page 200 of the manual. The instructions for Apollo 11 were thinner than the book for this camera.

I’m heading down to Vinton Co. today for the annual BBQ Chicken/Fly-in/Air Show, although I intend to get out of there before they close the runway for the “Air Show.” I didn’t get out in time last year and had a few hours to regret it. My passenger for today is a local guy that left a comment on one of my YouTube videos. As I understand it, he’s had a few rides over the years and is now in the position I was a few decades ago (minus the rides, of course – I never had any): he wants to get his license.

My advice to him will likely be the same as I give everyone else I meet in his situation: it at all possible, find someone willing to sell a share of an older Skyhawk or Cherokee, rather than pay $80/hr Hobbs on a rental. This obviously requires much more commitment than renting, but I’ve met too many people that scrimped and saved to get their license, only to find that they couldn’t afford to do anything with it once they were done. Believe me, there were many, many years when I knew exactly what that felt like. There were a whole lot of days when a view similar to the picture above did not invoke eager anticipation in me; rather, an early morning horizon like that would cause a deep, visceral frustration at my ground-bound status.

I haven’t forgotten.

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Middle School Football

Co-pilot Egg wanted a ride to her school’s football game tonight, and since I just went flying last night I was able to oblige. She also wanted Daddy to fade into the background rather than provide hours of endless embarrassment in front of her too-cool-for-school friends, but in that I was unable to oblige. No, I decided to re-live some of my old glory days as the school photographer, except this time I’d be using a nicer camera and I wouldn’t have to develop my own film and make my own prints like I did way back then.

Our team won 8 – 6. But, those teen years being what they are, that’s not the story of the night. No, the big story is so-and-so flirted with such-and-such, even though “so” doesn’t really like “such” all that much, and the whole thing was just to get back at somebody-or-other. Ah, youth.

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Feedback on my photos

I asked a professional photographer that I’ve known via the internet from way back when I worked at Compuserve to take a look at the pictures I entered in the Arts Festival and share opinions. Compuserve was the interent before there was an internet. I met Rick in the Flight Sim Forum back in 1990 or so. You can see some of his work on his blog at On Location With Rick Lee.

So, here’s the email I had waiting for me this morning:

OK… I think your wife might have been right. That mirror photo does nothing for me at all. There’s too much extraneous stuff that adds nothing to the photo. I prefer simplicity of design. I love the crow but I would
have cropped it and done some other stuff to it. See attachment. I like
the B&W photo. It’s too bad that door is open… that detracts, but I know you couldn’t do anything about that. It’s still good. I like the red plane the best of all… with a few little edits.

The edits he made will be readily apparent:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

That’s why he’s a professional and I’m a hobbyist, I guess. I’m motivated to learn, though! I’m always amazed at the difference the editing makes, and I really need to take the time to learn how the use the tools more fully.

Here’s the email I replied with:

Thanks for taking a look!

Ah, you got rid of that damn foot (and flag, and tail of other airplane, and…)! I haven’t the “mad skillz” (as my daughter would say) to do that. Awesome! I swore that as soon as OJ and I found the real killer, my next quest was to find the owner of that foot! Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the foot, I would have entered that one. I already have it framed and ready to go. In fact, it’s hanging right here in my office.

Registration is still open – I wonder if they’d let me switch… I’d have to leave the foot and stuff in it, though, as a matter of personal ethics. Nah, there’s always next year. I’m also kind of big on living with the consequences of my decisions, and it would give me time to learn how to edit stuff like that out by myself. I assuming GIMP would be sufficient with enough effort.

The wife will be (or would be, if I was actually going to tell her!) pleased to learn that you agree on the mirror picture. Maybe I’ll save that comment and give it to her for her birthday. That diamond ring she got last year is going to be hard to top.

I did tell the wife, as it turns out. She was far more gracious about it than I would have been. She’s still not getting another diamond, though! Maybe a Caribbean vacation…

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A busy afternoon

The lawn really needed mowing, and I had to get over to town to register some photos for the Art Festival scheduled for this weekend, but the weather was just too inviting to ignore. Papa was thirsty for gas, and it doesn’t take all that long to hop over to MadCo to let him feed at the trough, so off we went.

Very little wind, but what little there was made itself known in my landing at MadCo. I needed a little right wing down to hold the runway centerline against the light crosswind from the right, and the touchdown was smooth enough, but I somehow ended up riding the left wheel like a unicycle down the runway. Tiring of the rather quickly, I planted the right wheel back down where it belonged with some right aileron. Not satisfied with the overall quality of the arrival, I taxied back and took off for another try. For some reason, Papa tried the same trick on the second landing, but this time I was ready for it.

Papa took 24 gallons at $4.47 per, and I marveled at the fact that this somehow felt like a reprieve. $5.00+ a gallon will do that to you, I guess.

The ride back was nice, with the clear, clear air making the barns and cars and other objects on the ground so sharp and well-defined that it almost looked like a gigantic HO train set. Papa was far better behaved back on his home runway, and we patted ourselves on our respective backs for pulling off such a greaser.

The next hour and a half was spent bouncing around the yard on my single-seater, grooming the grass back to an appearance of civility. Finished with just enough time to gather up my photos and head into town, I even managed to get the registration for the festival done.

Each entrant is limited to three photos, which makes the selection very difficult. I try to find a balance between pictures I just plain like and pictures that I think will appeal to the judges. There’s money involved, after all. Last year was the first time I had entered anything, and I actually came away with an Honorable Mention, aka 4th place. Oh well, $10 is $10, and the competition was pretty tough.

Here are the photos that I finally selected for this year:
(And remember: click on the picture to see a larger version)

I titled this one “Grand Solitude.” While it’s a picture that I really like, it was entered primarily because the wife really, really, really likes it. I don’t know whether the judges will like it, though. For all I know, it’s just a picture of a bird. But I like it a lot. If you didn’t know that he was sitting in a tree no more than 5′ from the edge of the canyon, you’d think I had to hover in a helicopter to get a shot like that, and even then you’d need a huge lens and a gyro stabilizer.

This one I called “Mid-life Reflections.” I think this is the most artistic of the bunch, in that I think there is a pretty obvious metaphor in it, at least from the point-of-view of a 46 year old. The reflections in the two mirrors present a couple of ways of looking at what’s behind me (the long road behind is a little fuzzy, but the closer view is still clear), the crispness of the mirror itself represents the sharpness and clarity of today, and the blurry graveyard shows that while I have a pretty good idea of where I’m headed, the path is still unclear.

It’s also a picture that the wife disparagingly calls “a picture of a mirror.” Hey, she got to pick the bird picture, right? I’m not saying that I entered it out of spite, mind you, but if it were to actually win something, well, I’m not above a little “I told you so.” Plus the fact that the taking of the picture was a completely unplanned, purely impulsive act as I was just driving along would lend a delicious touch of irony if it were to win over my carefully crafted pictures. And I just love irony!

This is one I selected 1) because the B&W category was under populated last year, and 2) because my friend Guy, who himself is a photography and airplane aficionado, really liked it. And you know what? I like it too!

In case you’re wondering what didn’t make the cut:

Hey, Van’s turned it down for the calendar, so it must not be that good.

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