Stijn!!

[GH85Carrera]

Welp, we survived it all. We made it home about 2:00 PM.

The Macan is fun on the curves, but a PDK is just not the same as a 5 speed 915 gearbox and a flat six screaming. They are just different animals. One this that is fun is set the cruise control to the posted legal speed limit. And just try to steer through the corners. Impossible to do on some curves without ending up in the trees. My right ear would also go deaf from all the screaming and hollering.

So I did slow down on the tighter curves.

Arkansas has just the best roads in the country. Even in the middle of nowhere, and the have a lot of that, the roads were pothole free, smooth, well marked, and just amazing. It is just astonishing how mile after mile of the roads are just pristine.

Michigan has the worst roads of any state I have driven in. Just horrible.

[Noah930]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Michigan has the worst roads of any state I have driven in. Just horrible.

Worse than Massachusetts? Mrs. Noah used to joke that some of the roads in Boston looked like they belonged in Beirut.

They'd resurface the road...over the course of about 3 weeks. So they'd tear up the asphalt...and then just leave it like that until they got around to repaving it in a few weeks. They'd just mark the protruding manhole covers (usually) with fluorescent orange paint.

[GH85Carrera]

In Michigan, we had the bad luck of pulling up behind a MDOT truck “fixing” potholes. It was a dump truck, with two men in the back tossing loose asphalt into the pothole. The pothole was still full of mud and water, so they had not cleaned it at all. Toss in a few scoops of asphalt, and drive off. No one on the ground to tamp it down, just the traffic to press it into the mud. Lots of lose asphalt bits all over the road getting on my car.
It was a total waste of time and money as no asphalt is going to stick in the pothole that was full of mud and water.
And there were more potholes per mile than any other state I have driven in.

[GH85Carrera]

Dang, working for a living can be sure interrupt a weekend!

We had a project pop up and like most, they want it right now. Our airplane was down for the annual inspection, and that means we take all the camera equipment off, all the personal items, and everything that was not factory delivered. The inspection was done and we had to go fly the project. So I had the remount the camera system, and get the computer hooked up.

The software for the camera system has several upgrades and I had never flow with it. So I went with the pilot on a mission to the Red River, the border between Oklahoma and Baja Oklahoma. Oh,by the way the winds were at 18 knots at ground level. So a very bumpy takeoff and a real roller coaster ride until we got through 4,000 feet. Then it was smooth at 4,500 feet all the way down to the site.

The project was flow at 3,000 feet so it was a bull ride and lots of bouncing around for the photo mission. The crosswinds were as high as 45 MPH at a 45 degree angle to our flight path. Keeping the wings level and flying a straight line, in all three dimensions was tough on the pilot. Then we popped back up through 4,000 feet to 6,000 feet and all was smooth and nice and cool.

As we made approach and descended to land it got real bumpy. Landing was exciting and the 182 did not want to touch the ground. The 20 knot head wind was a keeping us in the air with ground effects. We landed and put in $260 in fuel and packed up and went home. Phew. I got home at 4:30, and started processing the project.

The real pain is they are using plant coordinates. Argh. So spit on the ground and that is the start of the world. No relation to anything a GPS or any other map has at all. Just make it fit to they plans. We need to charge extra for that crap.

[GH85Carrera]

You many not believe this, there is water just falling out of the sky! Amazing.

We had a nice wet May and no drought, then April arrived and the rain stopped. We have only had a few sprinkles until today. We may get over an inch of rain. That will not break the drought, but it is a start. Looking at the lake levels as I flew over on Saturday most were a little low. This will help fill a lot of farm ponds and lakes.

[ted]

Nice and cool, finally got around to waxing the trailer.
Like polishing a house.

[GH85Carrera]

I was looking at our airplane on Saturday. It could use a good wax job, but it would be a real chore with all the surfaces.


Two tanks to fill with fuel.



The icon of the airplane shows the direction we are pointed, bu the cyan line show our actual direction of travel. There were times with the 45 knot winds the line looking like a bent reversed letter C.



This was as we were climbing out to cruise altitude. If you zoom in on the right screen in the last photo you can see the line is very curved.

[Porsche-poor]

Morning all. It has been busy few days. Going nuts with working with the east coast.

[GH85Carrera]

We had over 2 inches of water just fall out of the sky. Just weird stuff!

A nice soaking rain, and it should fill up all the lakes and ponds. We have another round coming on Friday.

Typical of so many customers, the project we flew on Saturday was something we bid on back at the beginning of the year. They called up and hair on fire hurry, we want it flown!

We fly it, and not I sit for several days waiting on their imaginary ground control points. If we were using normal rest of the world GPS coordinates I could finish is short order after the file for the GCP points come in. Not with them using plant coordinates. GRRRR.

[Porsche-poor]

WE have had that issue in a large refinery project. The plant uses 0,0 at a specific spot inside the plan for all coordinates on the plant site. They actually have a survey that locates that point in the real world. We had to use real world to out the new equipment in and then convert it to the plant based system. Perhaps that have a survey like that that they are just not giving you.

[GH85Carrera]

That would be great. They have in the past, sent us a JPG of a printout of the coordinates. We just reject that, and tell them we insist on a text file. It is way too easy to transpose a digit and make ourselves nuts trying to figure it out.

This is mostly a shallow river with LOTS of sand and rocks and several ponds. It is going to be a royal pain to use plant coordinates.

There are literally dozens of sand and gravel mines in that part of Oklahoma. This one has been around for a long time. We had one customer call when I was still at my last job and wanted all the historical aerials we had of a site of the river. Her family ancestors had been deeded an island in the middle of the river by the Spanish government before there was a Mexico or USA. It was just a lot of gravel and some trees. The river changed courses during different floods and the island moved from Oklahoma to Texas and back. The legal border is the south side of the river bank. I always wondered how they paid property taxes, to Texas or Oklahoma or both.

She wanted aerial photos from the 1800 and I reminded her that airplanes were not invented until the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903. There were some aerial s from balloons in France before that, but not over Indian territory in the 1800s. We had it in the 1930s and 1950s and up to current date for her. The tragedy is the idiot son that inherited the business dumped all those negative in the trash.

[Porsche-poor]

Clients are never fun but hey someone has to pay the bills.

[GH85Carrera]

Just today I delivered some prints for a recent project. Nice lady, and extra special, she hands me a nice check for payment!

That is my favorite type of client!

I could have delivered it yesterday, but it was raining. To deliver the prints I have have to use the boss's wife's Macan. She insisted I buy her lunch for the use of the vehicle. So we ate lunch, went to the print service bureau, then right to the customer. Then right to the gas station so I was allowed to pump in the gas for a full tank. She did pay for her own gas.

[Porsche-poor]

yeah she paid for the gas but the boss will make you dig some more holes for it.

[GH85Carrera]

Oh yea. We had to hack back a bath through the two front flowerbeds. The sidewalk was covered in plants after the windy days and rain. The plants slumped over and it was like a jungle. Some hacking and now we can see the sidewalk.

[Porsche-poor]

see you had to pay for the use of the car. Next you might have to wash it.

[Porsche-poor]

well another trip to the dentist went well. Now its work till 4 and head home and hide,

[Porsche-poor]

big shots in the office yesterday and today. All work I am not involved in so easy to avoid them.

[GH85Carrera]

Here it, Thursday and the client still has not managed to get us a text file of the control points. Oh well. We will just wait, not much choice.

[Porsche-poor]

IT will come Sunday night and the clouds will come on Monday.