Franklin County

I came up to the "Stowell Farmhouse" with Mom's managment crew, with Mom and the Cherry Tree (Cherokee). Ivan said there was no electricity when I showed folks the frozen pizza I brought, so I figured there was no internet either, and combined with zero cellular service, that meant I could not fly the new drone. However, I noticed a blinking light on a modem in the house indicating it was on. So Ivan was wrong. I had to stay within 20 feet or so of the house but was able to get the drone off the ground. It was quite exciting even though the weather was a bit overcast. I went upstairs and and had my mother put the camera goggles on, which allow one to see what the drone sees, in real time. She thought it was fabulous and noted that we could get the lake and barn and home all in a photo at once which is something is she could not accomplish on the ground alone. So I went to work trying to achieve the right height and angle to properly proportion the home the barn in the lake all at once.
That work continued today and it was much better weather. On my first attempt ( I only got about a 15 minute window of having the thing in the air and terms of battery time before it automatically starts coming back) I did an excellent job. The thing isn't easy. Skills-wise it is not too difficult it's just very glitchy. Anyway I focused on photos rather than video and really got some excellent shots, at various altitudes and angles. Some photos were as high as 1000 feet in the air! Amazing.
Mom and Veronika will be extremely pleased and the high def photos should appear in advertisements. I had a feeling dragging that drone all the way out here would be a good idea.
I very much also enjoyed making myself useful with the drone, and helping to unload the boat, haul dozens of pillows in the Cherry Tree and so forth.
I took JeepWhiz up on the Ring of Mountains through Lake View Mountain Bowl. This was not a good idea. I got in the main gate on West Side rd but its been so gated so long there's hardly a road left. Scratched up Jeep Whizz pretty bad and only to arrive at the top (see rough location map photo) at a gate with a combo lock I don't know the combo to. So back down I came.
I then tried the drone again at the farmhouse for even more footage but the goggles would not connect to the drone. Finally after shutting everything down 3x and using up half the battery it connected. I launched it and it had a bad glitch, powering down sideways onto the field at about 40mph. Amazingly even though pieces flew apart, it is now back together and is apparently 100 percent okay. However, I stop filming for the day and instead did take a number of still photos with an excellent camera I picked up in San Francisco recently. It took really really good shots and the light was fantastic. So that was nice. Then I went over to the store where got a couple Italian sandwiches and came back to the Chalet where I am now. Its nice that I can work on this little blog with no cell svc and sync it later.Read more