Category Archives: Video

June 25, 2017 · 23:58

Not A Once In A Lifetime Thing Any More

As mentioned yesterday, Space X just launched out of Florida on Friday and  then was going to try to launch out of California today, an unprecedented feat for a private space company, and one which even NASA the Air Force and their subcontractors don’t try.

So yeah, they succeeded. Brilliantly. Ten new Iridium satellites were delivered perfectly into their proper orbits – and the booster was recovered safely, landing on the Pacific Ocean based barge, “Just Read The Instructions.” Go ahead, watch the video that Mr. Musk links to and tell me that it’s not impressive as hell.

Going out of Vandenberg, a two-hour drive north of us, on a Sunday afternoon, one would think it would be a perfect opportunity to go see a launch. You can’t get on the base, but there are viewing spots in the Lompoc area where you can get a pretty good view.

Here’s a video that my friend Kate Squires posted on FaceBook. I just love the “ripping” sound you get at about 1:05 as the noise hits you:

I had commitments that kept me from going, but it’s not even a bad thing – BECAUSE THEY’RE GOING TO DO IT AGAIN. Soon. And then do it again. And again.

A launch used to be something that was almost unique unless you worked for NASA or the Air Force or a subcontractor or lived in the area. For guys like me with a “normal” job and a need to travel to see a launch, it was a destination and something to be planned out. It was a big freakin’ deal. A given launch might not be a true “once in a lifetime” opportunity (well, maybe Apollo 11, or the first shuttle flight, or the last shuttle flight…) but it was definitely not an every day occurrence.

SpaceX is well on the way to changing that. We might be a few years away from them having daily launches – but that’s what they’re aiming for.

They’re already talking about landing some of the boosters not back at a big, open landing site a mile or two from the launch pad, but back on the launch pad itself. They’re serious. They’re talking about a day when they have so little refurbishment necessary that they launch, land back on the pad, load the next payload on top, refuel, and launch the same rocket again within 24-hours. At which point they presumably would do it again.

That may be a ways off, simply because the market isn’t there for that yet. But it’s a chicken-and-egg problem. The market isn’t there because no one is designing projects that require hundreds or even thousands of launches because there was no conceivable way to get a thousand launches. But if you could, and if you could get those thousand launches for what it used to cost to get ten launches, and you could use those thousand launches to…

Look at the time! It’s late – we’ll have to continue that thought tomorrow or the next day. But you get the idea.

As for true “once in a lifetime” events, there’s one of those coming up in two months, which we also should talk about in the next day or two.

(I’m such a tease!)

 

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Filed under Astronomy, Space, Video

May 21, 2017 · 22:56

Bomber Flight Video

​​​Videos from yesterday’s flight in our PBJ bomber. One of the striking things to me was the differences in the sound of the engines in various places.

From the waist gunner’s seat on the starboard side, just aft of the wing. ​​

From just aft of the round (and open!) hole on the starboard side. Listen to the sound of those pistons popping!!

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From the tail gunner’s position, looking out the back.

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Video

March 5, 2017 · 22:51

PBJ Video – Really, Really!

I wish I could upload the full HD version of this. The current generations of iPhones are just freaking awesome in the quality they have. They run rings around what the network studios were using just fifteen years ago – and cost a couple hundred bucks and you carry them in your pocket instead of costing a couple hundred thousand bucks and needing to have them mounted on wheels with two people to move them.

But I digress.

The full video is 1.634 GB, which is about 20% of the disk space I have available on WordPress. I know that I’ll eventually have to expand my disk space, and expand the expense, but by that time it will be a toss-up on whether to stay on the WordPress.com site or to get my own in-house server and install a WordPress system. Either way, I was sort of betting on that happening in five or six years, not five or six months – which is what will happen if I make a habit of uploading full nine-minute HD videos.

I guess if anyone wants to see it badly enough, let me know and we can figure out a way for you to send a memory stick for me to use to send it back to you by snail mail. Or something.

In the meantime, QuickTime is very good about taking 1.634 GB, full resolution, HD videos and converting them to slightly less spectacular quality videos. It defaults to spitting out three versions, the first of which is for a “cell phone”. I don’t know what kind of cell phone they’re talking about but while it’s only a 5.6 MB file it’s also a teeny-tiny image that looks truly shitty on an iPhone, let alone an iPad or a desktop. QuickTime will also automatically generate an “iPhone” version which is moderately compressed, so it gets cut down to 62 MB. That’s way better than 1,633 MB!

The third version is a “desktop” version, weighing in at 94 MB, which I can live with. It’s not half bad, I hope you enjoy it.

A couple of things to note:

  1. Yes, it really is that freaking loud. That’s why the ground crew uses hand signals to communicate with the pilots.
  2. At about the 2:35 mark you’ll hear the engines “sputter” or “miss” for a half second. This isn’t a problem, it’s a routine test of the redundant magnetos that provide the ignition spark. As the pilot switches from “both” to “left,”, then to “right,” there’s a miss but it’s normal. Before flight, you want to make sure that both of them work independently if one fails.
  3. No, the propellers aren’t stopping or going really slow or running backwards. It’s just the “wagon wheel effect” where the rate of the RPM on the engine gets near, at, or a bit over some multiple of the frame rate of the camera.
  4. At the 4:30 mark you’ll see a Ventura County fire & rescue helicopter coming in on the left. Their hangar is the one you can just see on the far right, off in the distance. It’s really quite impressive to see that big Huey variant take off and land.
  5. A lot of the time we spend after the get the engines started is waiting for our turn to get on the taxiway. It was a nice day and there were a lot of other small planes tooling around. This also adds a delay once we get to the runway and have to wait our turn behind all of the planes landing and taking off in front of us. At about the 8:40 mark you can see, as Dan said, there are better than a half-dozen other plaens out there waiting their turn.

Enjoy! And if you’re interested and want to take a ride with us – I know a bunch of guys who can make that happen!

 

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Video

February 17, 2017 · 22:08

Deluge

I’ve seen worse. I grew up in the midwest where we had thunderstorms and tornadoes that would turn your world upside down in an instant. I’ve been in Vermont, Vrigina, Illinois, and New York where it rained harder. With lightning and thunder to boot.

We even got caught in the remnants of a hurricane once, driving from Maine to Boston at night. We literally couldn’t see twenty feet and there was so much water we wouldn’t have been able to tell if we had gone off the road into a river. That’s how you take a two hour drive and turn it into a six hour nightmare.

But for LA, this was the worst in many, many years.

I had the iPhone up against the glass to minimize any reflections from inside the office. The sound year hear is the rain hitting the window sideways in the 50 to 70 knot wind gusts.

The “best” part was feeling the big plate glass window flex with every gust. I’m sure it wasn’t really moving a couple of centimeters in each direction, but it felt like it.

You gotta love rain in LA.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Video, Weather

January 2, 2017 · 20:44

A Walk In The Lights

Complete with an audio track of a 737 going into Burbank and a business jet going into Van Nuys!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Video

December 4, 2016 · 23:05

Assembly, Not Trimming

One of the “best bang for the buck” items in our household is the artificial Christmas tree we bought at least a dozen years ago. (It might be longer.)

The old phrase “trimming the tree” isn’t quite appropriate for a fake tree – “assembly” is a better verb. I remember last year thinking (after the fact) that the assembly process would be a good subject for a time lapse video. This year I actually remembered to do it as an experiment.

Not perfect – probably need to get some sort of tripod mount for the iPhone to do it better. But not bad.

Welcome to the Willett household Christmas tree assembly, 2016 version!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Paul, Ronnie, Video

October 23, 2016 · 22:58

Spitfire Day

Yesterday at our CAF SoCal hangar we had a “Spitfire Day” presentation. It was the 80th anniversary of the introduction of the Spitfire.

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Not only did visitors get to see our beautiful Mark XIV Spitfire up close and personal…

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…but they got to hear from Steve Barber all about what it’s like to fly the Spitfire. Our wing historian, Ron Fleishman, also talked about the history of this particular aircraft.

Then, after everyone got to see the aircraft up close and do a pre-flight walk around inspection, it was time to get a brief flight demonstration.

The air traffic controllers at the Camarillo Airport tower are always great about working with us for these events. It was a regular operating day at the airport with dozens of aircraft coming in and going out every hour, from tiny Cessna 150’s up to very large Gulfstream business jets.

But they managed to squeeze in a couple of spots in the traffic pattern to allow Steve to do some high-speed passes down the runway. Nothing fancy, no aerobatics without an airshow waiver of course – but it sure is sweet to hear that 1200+ horsepower engine purr!

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Video

October 19, 2016 · 22:42

Reduced To This

Between the work, the “debate” (I’m not doing much political ranting here, but a quick look at my Twitter feed on the right side of the page should make it clear where I stand), a sore shoulder, and the worst night ever with the freakin’ nocturnal leg cramps (and zero vivid dreams as “reward”), I’ve been reduced to this:

What the hell were they thinking in the 80’s??

And there’s the connection. In the late 2040’s they’re going to look back at these debates and say, “What the hell were they thinking in the Twenty-Teens?!”

On the other hand, in the late 2040’s that hair will probably be back in style. We can only hope.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Health, Music, Video

March 28, 2016 · 23:34

A Time-Lapse Cloudy View

Nice view from my office window, especially on a day with puffy clouds racing in different directions at different altitudes. Lots of playing with shadows and sunlight across the landscape.

Pity I don’t have much time to look at it.

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Filed under Video, Weather

March 9, 2016 · 23:13

Mind Blown – March 9th

Listening, as usual late at night, to the 80’s Alternative “New Wave” channel on Sirius-XM. Up comes this, pretty much a catchy standard on this channel, often good for really cranking it up:

I knew that it was from a not-so-well-known musical called “Chess,” which makes sense when you listen to the lyrics. Sure, the lyrics are full of not-so-subtle double entendres. It’s still catchy.

I knew that it was performed by Murray Head, but for the life of me I couldn’t name any other song I’ve EVER heard him do. I figured that he was a one-hit wonder with a song from an otherwise forgotten musical.

WRONG!

The online version the Sirius-XM app has notes about each artist as the song’s playing. Only the first couple of lines are showing, with more if you click on the link. I rarely pay much attention, but tonight I clicked, hoping to find out more about “Chess.”

It’s semi-interesting that it was co-written by Tim Rice. I’ve heard that name, he did something else, what was it…? Ah, yes.

Then I saw it in the notes.

It turns out that Murray Head was also in Tim Rice’s big hit, the one that’s still playing around the world, in the lead role in the original London cast:

Yes – the same guy who does “One Night In Bangkok” also played Judas Iscariot in “Jesus Christ Superstar” and can be heard on the original cast recording from 1970. You know, the one that we just about wore right through the vinyl playing it so many times.

Mind.

Blown.

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Filed under Music, Video