moombahton24

Decided to try a 1080 video with my new Samsung Galaxy S8+ to see how it works out. This is unedited, and raw, straight from the phone.

Video is of a juvenile heron feeding on something at the water's edge at St. Marks, FL.

Sorry, still getting familiar with this thing, so I didn't have it set for 4K, nor could I figure out how to zoom. I figure it's digital zoom, anyway, so no big loss.

I used the drone for one of the mundane purposes I have often thought it would be good for: Checking for clogged downspouts on the roof of my garage. This seemed to work fairly well, but the drone seemed a bit difficult to control. I think it was because of the downdraft of the propellers, first because of being at the edge of the roof, and secondly because the roof is sloped. But it did get the job done, as after viewing the video, yes, I needed to clean out those gutters. I think a bigger screen than my Galaxy S8+ will have to be in the future, because in that manner I could actually check things out in real time instead of having to dump the video files to my PC and do the inspection on the large screen.

For the record, with rain coming in the forecast, I dragged out the 12 ft. ladder and cleaned out the rainspouts the next day. Wish I could put some sort of grappling hook on the drone so it would help with this job. I noticed that it was pretty effective blowing around dry pine needles so perhaps I can periodically blow off loose pine needles on top of the roof. I guess I could do the same thing with the garage apron, too. Sure makes leaf blowing a whole lot more interesting!

After the inspection, heck, I just took another spin around the property a bit overtop the tree tops. Another uneventful flight with an uneventful landing. But I can still hear a squeaking noise coming from somewhere on the drone. Likely a motor, but I'm a bit leery of trying to get too close to put an ear closer to the motors to figure out which one. Maybe I can just have it idle on the ground and figure it out that way.

I took this video in 2560x1440 60fps and then upsized it to 4K fps using Vegas Pro 15. I still think the 60fps is the way to go with drone footage unless the drone is absolutely still while taking video. 30fps just looks blurry while taking video while the drone is in motion to me.

Been dealing with an intermittent drivetrain noise on my C5Z for a long time, so decided to make an effort to try to figure out what is going on. Been told it is clutch noise (Centerforce clutch), but I would like to be more certain about this.

The noise shows up when I am at a dead stop and let the clutch pedal out. When apparently the clutch pressure plate forces the clutch disk against the flywheel, that is when I here a squealing/chattering noise. So first off I set up a remote microphone underneath the bell housing and recorded the video such that I could see when I was letting the clutch out and coincide that with the noise.

Then I used a Steelman Wireless Chassis Ear kit by putting remote pickups in 4 different places. I noticed then that their is a pretty constant whine from the clutch area that I just thought was the oil return pump for my rear mounted turbos. I'm thinking it may be those weights on the Centerforce clutch fingers making a chattering noise. Anyway, I think it may really be the clutch making the noise, but if anyone has any input about other options, please let me know. I think I will just live with the noise for a while longer, but plan on changing out that clutch sometime in the future. It's not really an easy job on the Corvette, so I'm going to put it off as long as I can.

Crossing over the bridge to St. George Island, FL in the Jeep Wrangler. Trying my hand at using GoPro Studio to process the videos from my GoPro that are taken in 4K/30fps.

Mounted the P900 on the Sky-Watcher Allview telescope mount so I could more easily position the lens when taking pics of the moon and other objects. Obviously vibration is still transmitted to the camera thought the tripod mount, so I have to plan ahead to make sure I have the controller in hand before starting video. Would be nice if Nikon's wireless remote would trigger video, but apparently it does not, unfortunately.

I also apparently had the auto-focus set on the wrong setting, which I apparently figured out on the last clip in this series. I'm thinking maybe I just try a fixed manual focus sometime to see how that works out.

I do have to say that the Allview mount does make moving the focus point on the P900 on distant objects a LOT easier that doing it hand held or even just on a regular tripod. The Allview allows you to select 9 different motion speeds in the horizontal and vertical planes, and from what I can see there is no backlash at all to deal with.

And I don't know about you, but I REALLY like the image of the moon with that deep blue background.

The security cameras I am testing out caught images of a bear prowling around on the property again last night. Haven't seen any damage to the bird feeders this time, however.

Testing a 4K 60fps file generated from a 4K 30fps source with Vegas Pro 14. I can't get any of my local apps to play it, so just seeing how this works out. It's a DARN big file, though, and just a really small clip, only about 25 seconds runtime, so I don't know how a 5 minute clip would work.

Figured I would try to capture audio from the drone to see if I could figure out where that high pitched squeal is coming from. I tried with the propellers off laying on a work table, using a microphone pointed at each motor, but I really didn't hear the squeal that way. So perhaps the lifting action of the propellers is a necessary component.

This drone sure acts squirrely when it gets near the table, so I guess it doesn't like any sort of uneven obstruction for the downdraft. I felt like I was fighting with one of my little manual drones trying to keep it where I wanted it.

I recalibrated the gimbal and the compass, and had to do a firmware update too, so I was running slim on battery life for the flight afterwards. The gimbal seemed more level than before, and I didn't get any of the compass errors I seemed to get every flight.

I also mounted a modified antenna booster too, just to see if that would help. But I didn't send the drone out far enough to really test it any. I will sometimes get video distortion on the display of the cell phone, so I want to see if the antenna booster will help with that.

I almost made a mistake when my wife was out there with me. Not paying close attention and when I was bringing the drone back down, it had drifted more than I had realized. And I got disoriented when I tried to move it away from the tree, but luckily caught it in time. I wasn't as close to the tree as it appeared in the video, but close enough. Not a good idea getting distracted when flying these things, I suppose.

Anyway tried a little manual "follow her" when the wife walked down the driveway to fetch the trash cans.

I'm still very impressed with how stable this flying video platform is.

This video was taken at 4K 30fps and I rendered it at the same resolution using Vegas Pro v15.

Not sure if this is normal for what would be considered as acceptable tolerance in something of this nature. But it sure looks like the shaft is bent on that axis. I used timelapse at the beginning, but did real time video the later part of the video.

Found this critter laying on a sandy road in the Apalachicola National Forest just sunning himself. Tried to get him to open his mouth in threat display, but he wasn't having any.

Video was taken using a Samsung Galaxy S8+ smart phone. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten this video at all.

Trying out my FLIR Scout TK thermal imaging scope. Not exactly suited for this kind of job, but gives me a pretty good idea of relative temperatures while the engine has been running for a little while. First did the engine bay, then went underneath with the car up on the lift to look at the exhaust system and the turbos. Also showed the exhaust rigging I set up to draw the exhaust fumes out of the garage.

Pretty plainly shows where the most heat is located. The headers probably should be wrapped or recoated with a ceramic coating. The Jet Hot coating I originally had on them has apparently degraded over the years.

Sorry about the apparent speed and jerkiness of the thermal image video. I really didn't do that intentionally, but what you are seeing is an artifact of converting a 9 fps video stream to 30 fps, which tends to speed of the viewing more than I like, but not sure how to fix it in post processing.

I can see where I would like to get a better unit with more resolution, higher fps, and the capability of actually displaying the temperature at any selected point. But the prices of such a thermal image device that has ALL of the points I mentioned is still prohibitive to me. It's not something I could see using all that much to justify the high price.

But for now, this will do what I wanted.

Since this was my first flight with this new quadcopter, I wanted to take things nice and slow and just check things out. I did play around with the video camera settings (saturation), but basically this was a just put it up in the air and move it around a bit to make sure the drone responded to the controls OK.

Not a hint of trouble.

I did scan along the horizon a bit to get a feel for the gimbal tilt problem that some of these devices seem to exhibit. As can be seen in the video, it does tilt some with movement, but it seems to slowly correct itself. It may still be out of alignment somewhat, but I don't think it's going to be anything I will be worrying about too much.

All in all I have to say I was tickled pink with how manageable it is, and the relative quality of the video. I took video in 4K but may try the 1440 60 fps next time around. There did seem to be some sort of "fluttering" in the video here and there, but not sure what was causing it. The sun was behind the drone when it is most noticeable, so that might have something to do with it.

And as you can see from the video, there will be little room for errors flying on my property with all those tall pine trees all around me. Slightest error and the drone will be sitting up on top of one of those trees, for certain.

Oh, the tarps on the garage apron were used last night to cover some of the more tender citrus trees we have here. Come to find out that we really didn't need the covers, as it only got down to 35 degrees last night, but earlier forecasts were predicting a low of around 31. The trees could probably have taken that without any damage, but better to be safe than sorry, I guess.

Cruising up the road in St. George Island state park in Florida in the Jeep Wrangler. Video taken with GoPro Hero 4 black using 4K/30fps.

Well, out of all the critters I would have expected to be harassing my watermelon plantings, I have to admit that foxes would have been way down at the bottom of the list. I hope they don't find the other mounds. :( I have NO idea what they find so interesting there.

Playing around with a wall mounted monitoring system and captured a group of turkeys in the driveway in front of the garage.

Took the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 to St. George Island to take some photos and 4K video. Wish I had taken a monopod, but maybe next time I'll remember. I can see where I am going to be clearing out all my 1080P video gear.