OTA.....

After my last post, it looked like Winter was done. Well apparently mother nature had other ideas. The weather has turned cold, the local ski hills got nailed with 30 to 40 cm's of new snow (fortunately most of it stayed away from Woodside!) The drop in temp has me thinking about something that is non flying related, a little project that I took on over the winter.

OTA ?  Simply put, the art of pulling your television signals out of the air using an antenna. OTA = Over the Air.

It all started when I had to replace my old television with one of these new fangle flat panel jobs. During the setup process I scanned my cable feed channels... of course none of them were in the HD the TV was capable of....except one. Seeing the HD got me thinking this ain't bad. I then decided to find out what it cost to get my cable company to deliver the HD. They suck. For the amount I watch TV, the cable companies don't deserve the coin that they were trying to hose me for.  In the process I tripped over the fact that of full HD signals being transmitted in the big cities, for FREE.

In end, there is plenty of info out there on the topic. My main source was:  Digital Forum

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

Next, I did some research using a online tool from a  web site called TV Fool ( http://tvfool.com/ ). Next, up went a mast and a small commercially manufacture antenna called a Clearstream4:

 

The results, a solid fix of 5 local digital channels (and another half dozen fair analog signals). 3 of the digital channels offer full HD (the nice stuff like, Hockey Night in Canada! and CTV's coverage of the Olympics!... all that a good Canadian needs).  The thing with digital signals, You either get a solid picture or you don't. No more bad twisted analog signals to try and coax something in.

The signals (if you've got signals to "get") are free. If you want to build your own antenna, they can be built for next to nothing (especially if you've got a bunch of old hang gliding junk kicking around, here is a photo album of my home brew:  http://picasaweb.google.com/towforce/DBGH# ).

I put $200 into a store bought rig (with amp) and I also built a free rig out of junk. Both preformed good enough .  Your TV needs to have a ATSC to deal with the digital encoding, most of the new sets do.

The funny thing is TV is such a time sucking device that really has taken over and wasted so much of our lives. I surf my short list of stations and if I see nothing it turn off.  (Think about the times you've surfed up and down your 50+ channels and nothing's on?)

If your fed up with Cable bills, give OTA a look.

Man I hope the flying season starts soon ;-)

And yet another year begins.... 2010

Looks like we have survived our winter and look forward to another season of aviation.  The little local event called "Winter Olympics" has come and gone and seemed like a pretty good time to dust off the wings and head to the hills.  Something called global warming has helped keep the local hills free of snow.... perhaps more accurately stated, "El Nino" and its warm ocean currents put up a challenging fight for the host of this years Olympic events!

With the warm winter Mia and I had picked a few days here and there to get out on the Paragliders. Even managed to scratch some airtime but Saturday, March 6th seemed like a good time to bust out the "Big Bird".

It was a scratchy hard work kind of flight but enough of a challenge to start getting the feel back. Managed close to 2 hours and a few nice speed runs through launch, ending in a so -so near no wind landing.  Mia decided to stick to the Paraglider until after her latest final exams (Mid April) but managed close to an hour.

Lots of rusty pilots out re-learning the art of aviation. Have to admit that after my Paraglider mid air a few years back I trust absolutely NO one while thermaling. Especially in the spring!

One of the rusty pilots out was my brother in law Ken, with his new (used) acquisition.... the ATOS VX:

 

Its a bloody Big Bird! My VR is no longer the local king of span! Ken is going to take some time getting used to his new wing but I think once he gets the handle on packing the behemoth around he will soon be enjoying the beast.

We head down to Mansfield Easter long weekend to chase out the mice, clean up the property and sump out the basement (if it needs it ;-) We will drag down the "Bags" just in case the Chelan's Airport Ridge is working. Other then that its more the act of getting away that we look forward to.... and there are not many places more "away from it all", then Mansfield WA.

Summer's.... Come and Gone....

So much for keeping the Blog up to date? The brief summary of this years summer flying..... Real nice July, August sucked, September could not muster a comeback.

No records to be claimed but plenty of airtime for our 3 weeks in Mansfield. Here is a link to our 2009 Summer Encampment .

I will try to update the album to include a few extra shots from our extra side trips.

Cheers

The Mouse?......

An update for any animal lovers out there, the mouse survived.

The cat flushed the vicious little bastard out from its cover. With two grown adults armed with thick towels and an excited pursuit cat managed to corner the snarling angry rodent. Not kidding the mouse had guts and was not going to be taken without a fight!

It all ended well with the mouse last seen bounding over blades of grass heading for the horizon. Probably ends up being lunch for a local owl?

Time to bring the Blog up todate ;-)

Geeeesh,  I have no idea how others manage to run and keep up to date posts on their blogs. Seems to me there are far more important things to do?

Well, it's early in the morning,  our Cat got me up by banging around our Mansfield shack looking for a mouse that she had dragged up from the basement.  Don't know if she found it yet but its keeping her busy. Sooooo, since I'm up I might as well address my dead blog.....

Between my last post and now, we had Winter.  Not much for flying (a few trips out on the paraglider just to get out).  We managed a few wonderful days snowboarding but never managed to do our trip to Whistler to visit old friends and put in a few Peak to Creek runs.

Mia returned to the Netherlands for her brothers birthday and got in some classic Dutch skating. They had great winter weather for skating, one of the skating treks was 30+km's, another was a 20km OR with Pub set up out on the ice. After all, if your going to put sharp metal blades on your feet, you might as well drink?

Back home I was stuck with the "projects".

The ATOS VR had a rib problem that needed repair. Seems, baking in the hot Washington sun had caused 1/2 the ribs to develop a case of the "bends" . Some were out as much 1/2". After a few letters to the factory I ended up building my own parts curing oven. After a few hours at 50-55C  and some weight I was able to get them straightened out.

Next up was a complete re+re of the velcro on Mia's VS. To take this project on I had to purchase a sail makers machine. After doing a bunch of searching I came across a nice old Pfaff  138 for $800 and it worked perfectly.  Of course Mia's VS was only one of my sail projects,  I updated the tip velcro on my VR and well not planned the owner of my old C managed to twist my arm and ended up getting a full velcro upgrade. Last sewing project was to make Mia a new glider bag, again the zig zag Pfaff did a great job.

Before the sewing projects came to an end, I managed one more "should get to it project".  It is amazing what you can find when you go searching....  The project: Building a "Flow-Form" tow line recovery kite.  Thing is, all the commercially available kites are not that well built (and we should know, we've killed many a kite out in sage!).  Well digging around on the net I came accros a link to an Excel formula that helped me scale a perfect, stable wing (just got it tested yesterday in real life conditions... it is the best chute that I have ever used).

Here is the link to the program:

http://www.hprinzler.de/ff03a2.zip
or you can go to the following site and download it yourself:
http://www.hprinzler.de/index_e.htm

Now, last obligation for winter was the promise to several people regarding a detailed video on our towing system. I suck at this video stuff but did manage to put together something that would upload to Google:

 

Yah, I ain't no Martin Scorsese... but I was able to check this project off my "things to do list".

Now.... its back to flying! More to follow.....

Cheers

Martin

End of Season? ooooops.....

Sorry, messed up some facts on my previous post. The stuff in the "beginning" and the stuff in the "end" was accurate but there was a little bit in the middle that was missing.

The September Long weekend was wonderful... for me (and its all about "me"?) Thing is, Mia got a raw deal. During the weekend she was out of commission with some bad back muscles.  She was a trooper and did some "crew" work but missed out on the spectacular end of season air.

I felt guilty (like only a husband can?).  I decided I could make up for her missed airtime. The great fall weather held and decided to crew for her on the following weekend, so the following weekend we blasted back over the Cascades for one more time.

With this second opportunity, Mia had two nice late in the season flights (a 75km out and return and a 70+km wandering flight in blue scratchy air). 

So... Technically... Mia had the last "end of the season flight" in Mansfield... but I did have the last flight to land back at home in Mansfield?

What ever.... Mia was happy... and that's good for me! 

Cheers

PS....the both of us are ready to do it all again next year!

That's it!... for this year :-)

The end of this seasons flying came with the September long weekend. Not always the best time of year to be aiming for a little airtime but this year... there was airtime to be had!

Here is a link to the WCSC "logbook" describing the weekend:

http://www.westcoastsoaringclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4655

A few weeks later Mia and I finished this season with a trip down to Mansfield to de-rig the tow rig and bring the beast back home for the season. It was fitting the skies were blue, it was hot and if you watched real carefully, you might have caught the twist of the last dust devils of the season.

On Saturday, we were worked on our projects , Mia putting a good coat of paint on some of the bedroom floors and I spent the morning pulling pieces off of the truck and taking photo's of the rig for a later posting.

At the end of a the day, I got a call from Jeff asking for a lift back to Chelan. Turns out our little air junky could not resist a late season effort from Chelan Butte where he managed to get away and land out on the flats at Mud Springs (part way out to Mansfield). Our plans put us on the way in to Chelan for dinner so we picked him up on the way.

The outstanding weather continued on Sunday. As summer continued to hang on mother nature was giving signs that the season was rolling to an end. Several groups of Sandhill Cranes past through heading south. They would be cruising along at around a 1000ft then stop to work some lift (and just like a vario they would start up loud series of squawks as if to indicate lift), then they moved on heading south for winter.

I did some aggressive pruning of some troublesome trees in our yard (damn things, you trim them once and they come back with a vengeance) at the same time Mia was putting another coat of paint on in the house.... finally we simply could not pass up such a beautiful day one more trip down to Park Lake.

We had just gotten out of town, when we got a call from Jeff, he had just arrive at Mansfield so we back tracked and dragged him down to the lakes with us. Park lake was heaven.

Going for a swim was perhaps a bit on invigorating side... but Mia made the plunge at least 3 times with the traditional 10o meter swim out to the shallow's off shore and back. I bravely got wet twice... but preferred sipping beers back on shore! Fitting end to a pretty good year.

We left Jeff at the lake with Vivian and family as they were off to do some tourist stuff in the area. We did our last cruise up the tow road and back into Mansfield to head home.

It was a pretty good trip through the Cascades. Just a little under 5 hours and I was sitting in the driveway back in Abbotsford. I looked down at the odometer.... from the start of the season to back home the tow rig had pulled 2300kms, at least a third of that had to back and forth and up and down L-Road! Even though I hate my Ford (in an affectionate sort of way).... She did a pretty fine job. Mind you, doing the "job" she did burn a feak'n pile of fuel, I swear this hunk of junk is "Fuel-Cooled".

As seasons go, we can't complain. Mia has sent off her record claims package to the FAI. If we did enough stuff right she should have established at least 5 world records for Female on a Class 05 !

I came close to claiming a 200km triangle speed.. but close only counts in Horse-Shoes and hand-grenades :-)... there is always next year (I did fly a personal best for triangle distance at 227km's and could have been much bigger but weather set down the rules).

On a sad note, A good flying friend of ours (Randy) had, for the last two years brought down his adopted "Rotty" named Shelby. She was a wonderful animal and made for great company (man if there is one thing a dog loves to do...It's ride in a pickup truck!). She took ill and passed away quickly.

This picture is of Shelby and Max (who past away of cancer last year). I think it shows the wonderful personalities that both of these two companions had....

Hopefully I got this link working but it should lead you to some shots of flying from April till September of this year.

The 2008 Mansfield Season

Cheers....