Recent content by stonecherub

Based on my experience as president of an Arizona homeowner's association; I think you have a HUMAN problem, the HOA is merely icing on the cake. In your population of residents, you have the normal "Gaussian" distribution of the human property "nasty vs. nice." Somebody on the nasty end of the...

Mickey S: This is, in fact, rocket science - of a kind. Digital photography and planetary probes sort of grew up together. The cost of sending cameras to the moon, or mars, or further, is (was) "astronomical" (to coin a phrase). Somebody, early on, figured out that only one camera was needed...

My comment is informed by scanning the many others where I did not see this technology issue raised. If cell phones (for example) can provide location information to 911 operators, why has nobody in the air show biz not thought of putting GPS transponders on all the a/c involved? Certainly the...

That's a beautiful 360 panorama but it is NOT 3-d! Stereo involves two different images, made from offset locations, one for each eye. It is the most difficult view type to display on a monitor or page because it requires the reader to either have something (glasses, a special viewer) or to...

This comment is about data. The story does not mention the fire department which implies that they do not know about this LiPo fire in their jurisdiction. It is not in their database but I suspect it probably should be. You might call them and ask if they're interested.

Good old Gauss (Carl Friedrich) explained so much about the world with his "bell-shaped" curve. On one side are the good guys and on the other are the bad, with most of us in the middle. I'm lucky, all of my flying is in a desert devoid of other people. I can neither annoy nor harm anybody else...

The 2 min video is cross-eye, the wind-mill is "wall-eye" stereo. I do this stuff all the time, trained as a geologist in the 60s and 70s. We worked with 9x9 aerial photos that overlapped by 60% where every rock was in two adjacent images, seen from two vantage points. Stereo viewers were as...

Two related, unrelated comments: A lot of modern parents casually use the term "choo-choo" in reference to any train when talking (teaching language) to their toddlers, even though THEIR grandparents were probably born too late to hear the sound of a working steam locomotive. Steam locomotives...

Meta4: I work in a strange place, a basalt volcanic field where the magnetic field can vary significantly over distances of meters. About half of my flights start from the calm desert floor and end uneventfully. Others are from cone ridges where lightning strikes have made quite powerful...

Compass calibration ... do it every time you fly, just because you can. Takes me about 30 seconds.

I have a Pro and it has a controller function to adjust the horizon, as I remember. Mostly, I level horizons with Lightroom in post-processing.

I have a Mavic pro with batteries that cost me between $80 and $90 each a couple of years ago. I also have a Ryobi 2 speed cordless drill (and some other tools) that I bought about 10 years ago and for which I have regularly purchased Ryobi batteries over the years as the old ones died. Why is...

Get some 3/4 inch Scotch "Expressions" tape in glow-green or orange, etc. Pull off about 6 inches and cut it lengthwise into two 3/8" pieces, about as wide as an SD card. Cut off about 2-3 inches, affix one end to the SD card, fold it in half and affix the other end to the other side which puts...

Great idea! I'm going to look for some yellow or green reflective tape to augment the skin. Thank You!

I crashed a Pro last April for a stupid reason (aren't they all?) in the best of all places - the Mexican desert. It has an orange skin which, unfortunately, looks like a common local ocotillo (oko-tee-o) flower. Thus, being on top of a volcano with good binoculars offered no advantage. The...