SUNSET, WIND AND BEACH RIDING.

The wind tonight was really strong from the west but i decided to head out on the pugsly and catch the last hour and a half of daylight.

I cycled out towards john muir country park and around spikey island and was relieved to turn around at the point and head along the sandy sweep of belhaven bay with the wind finally at my back, you can just make out the WW2 anti glider poles sticking out of the sand, these have recently been exposed thanks to the recent large tides and swell that we had last week.

During WW2 the british fear of an airborne assault stemmed from the coup de main attack of german glider borne troops capturing the Belgian fort of eden Emael, with east lothian having some large hard sandy beaches such as Aberlady bay with east fortune airfield near by which was used extensively in WW2, Burntisland and also Belhaven bay would if not for the anti glider poles  made excellent landing grounds.

As i continued my cycle along the beach with the strong wind at my back i noticed a large number of gannets feeding out in the bay, i tried my best to capture this event but my small compact camera was not up to the task, The biggest single gannet colony in the world is the bass rock which is home to an estimate 150,000 gannets during the summer months, the gannets spend most of the year on the bass rock until the end of october then fly south some as far as the west coast of africa.

With the wind gaining in strength and the sun slowly slipping below the horizon it was i decided time to head for home to wash down the pugsly, a quick ride tonight but very enjoyable indeed.

 Belhaven bay at dusk.

I NEED A GIMBAL

Yesterday we went along to yellow craig beach for the skinny dip in aid of the marie curie cancer charity with the ILB as safety cover, on the way back home the wind dropped and the sun came out so i decided to get the quadcopter out and film the inshore lifeboat crew recover and square away the boat while i filmed them from the air, however when i tried to get the phantom airborne i got all sorts of error               lights flashing from the led display, and the quads propellers refused to kick over, so with some investigation on the DJI website i quickly discovered that i had to upgrade to the latest firmware, which  thankfully was a breeze to download and install, once that was done i had to recal the imu's, today i took it out for a test flight over the promenade,enjoy the film.

FLY FISHING

Just recently i have rekindled my interest in fly fishing, something i have not done for over three years, so i purchased a permit from the pet shop in dunbar for the river tyne, looked out my fly rod and I've spent at least three hours every day this week fishing, the first day i must admit i was a little rusty and it took most of the first session to get my casting sorted out.

Tuesday morning i awoke early to bright sunshine so i loaded the surly LHT with my fly fishing gear and had a very pleasant cycle along the old A1 to the river, once there i studied the water and due to the warm weather there where a number of fish rising and plenty of fly activity on the water, the area where i wanted to fish was tight so i opted to use the tenkara rod, i tried to match the hatch as best i could with the patterns that i had in my fly box and tied on a small olive spider and aimed the line under a low hanging tree branch where there was a number of fish rising, for the first fifteen minutes the small trout ignored my fly so a change to a small wet greenwall glory, i again cast the line under the tree branch and started a slow retrieve of the line and bang fish on, although small these little brown trout put up a surprisingly good fight when fished with light gear, i fished on into the afternoon landing around eight brown trout all catch and release.

PRACTICE FLIGHT IN ATT MODE

                      

A weeks holiday and although into spring the weather has been quite poor, snow, sleet, rain & high winds for the last six days, not to mention i have been laid up with a stomach  bug that has been doing the rounds and as a result surfing and cycling hasn't been an option, none the less today was sunny and dry albeit there was a rather stiff cold north east wind, despite this i headed out to the old A1 on the outskirts of Dunbar to practice with my Quad copter, the stiff breeze and the fact that i kept the quad in the ATT mode meant that the video is a little shaky, but I'm getting a little more competent each time i get out but still need a little more practice before i start making videos of surfers, which is why i bought the phantom in the first place, still practice makes perfect so they say.

Below is another phantom video i made a few weeks ago when the weather was much more accommodating, this is a flight over the remains of the old battery on lamer island at Dunbar harbor, and out over the forth.

DJI PHANTOM GPS FLIGHT

Tuesday i had a day off work so it was up at 06:30 put a load of washing in the machine

and then get the rest of the house work out of the way, which left the rest of the day to myself, and as the weather was fair with next to no wind i grabbed the chance to get some more practice in with flying the DJI phantom, for this flight i kept the aircraft in gps mode and just performed some simple maneuvers as i only have two flights under my belt, i switched the phantom on and waited for the  flight iums to warm up which took about five minutes, once the led light turned to green i started the motors and hovered around head hight and took my hands away from the controls the phantom hovered at the same hight and maintained it's position thanks to the gps system getting a good sat reception, once i was satisfied that everything was working correctly i reduced the throttle and brought the phantom down to land and switched on the go pro camera, by this time i only had about 7 minutes of flight time left, as the lithium polymer battery only give about 14 minutes of flight time.

The DJI phantom has a return to home function, should the signal from the transmitter be lost the aircraft will return to the take off position and land on it's own, a good way to test this function is to turn off the transmitter in mid flight and as long as the sat-alight signal is good it will come home and land, however i've not had the confidence to try this yet just incase it goes pete tong.

FIRST FLIGHT WITH THE DJI PHANTOM

So after setting up my Quadcopter the DJI phantom, now it was time to bite the bullet and fly it, so i cycled along to deer park and began calibrating the compass on the phantom, with this done without any problems i began the sequence to start the motors in the recommend GPS mode for the first flight the props kicked into life so i applied more throttle and all of a sudden i was airborne, i kept the phantom hovering about head high and started of slowly with a few easy maneuvers ahh this is to easy so i reduced the throttle and came down to land, easy i thought, lets try her in the att mode that the pros use, well it was a different story all together.......gave her more throttle and away she went, unfortunately not as easy to control the phantom in this mode of flight and was lucky not to turn the maiden flight into a expensive disaster, as i found out it was very easy to lose control once the wind comes into the play and i almost lost her to some tree's, with my heart in my mouth i eventually brought my new toy down to land albeit on an uneven surface and the props got a little tangled in some weeds, however no damage was done and i live to fight another day, but i'll be living that day in GPS mode until i'm a more accomplished pilot.

WIND WIND WIND

This week has been wild, with high winds rain sleet and light snow showers, today was still very windy but dry and bright, so i grabbed the chance to make a beach biking film with the go pro and try out more settings, its also my 40th birthday tomorrow(feb 7th) and I've been looking at alternative ways to film things and decided a while back to save some cash and buy a quad copter for some aerial film making with the go pro, well with the money saved up it was happy birthday to me, the quad copter arrived yesterday and i spent the whole day setting it up, but due to the weather as yet haven't had time to test it, however friday looks like a good day for a maiden flight with lighter winds and sunny conditions, fingers crossed