How Did We Get To This Point?

I know I'm being non progressive and old fashioned but the thought of running my farm on a computer controlled  tractor is not something  I want to  do.  This recent news  story shows  just how crazy it can get when you can't  fix or  adjust anything  on your tractor because the computer software in it is still the intellectual property of the company that sold  it to you. This is not me
But for anybody efficient and  progressive enough that can't farm with 25 year old equipment, I guess this is the way it has to be.
On the other hand, I do accept new  technology in the form of drones :-) They are great for checking  out the fields and  crops from above. And things certainly do look different from up there. Learning to fly is an ongoing learning experience. For some unknown reason the gimbal quit "gimbaling" on mine while flying  this weekend. This is the mechanism that adjusts the camera lens up or down according to my commands. But it quit responding. After a rest and battery recharge, plus a little manual working of the gimbal, it seemed back to normal for the next flight. I was able to get some video without flying into the trees or driving the Merc into the ditch so it was a good day.

Way Up There

Recent changes to the rules for recreational drone users due to increased incidents of drone/airplane collisions. Or something like that. I guess it is no surprise that a few careless or irresponsible operators have caused problems and the rules had to be tightened up to affect us all. They say you can't fly within 9 km of an airport which is no problem for me being out in the middle of nowhere. I might see one plane a week fly over and usually well above drone flying altitude.
Rules also state we can't fly above 90 metres. (about 300 feet). I guess that is not a huge problem because for most photography that is more than high enough. But these things will actually fly up to over 2000 feet altitude so you might guess that some of us would have to test the limits.
And 245 feet is the limit to how close you can fly to a building. Again, it is good to live in the middle of nowhere.

In other news, its warming up and the snow is melting. One of these days I might actually have to start working again.

Follow Me

Follow me is the name of the program that allows the Autel drone to follow (or lead) as I walk, drive or whatever. Tried it out today on a drive through the snow covered trails of the hundred acre woods. I did not get lost or crash into the trees with either vehicle so I'll call it a success.

Multiple Crashes

This laptop has been ailing off and on all week it seems. Crash dumps every day and sometimes several times. Startup repair can't seem to fix itself so I usually end up going to system restore to an earlier date. Seems to work until today when even that would not work. Tried the mirror image (I think thats what they called it) and it reset the whole thing back to some date in 2015 which seemed to get things back to more or less normal.
The down side of that is any video or photo I had saved since that date in 2015 is now gone, or at least not visible on the laptop. Many of the videos were already on youtube but I know I had a few new edited versions ready to upload that are now gone. Some I can retrieve from the camera cards but I know some are gone. I can't remember for sure what they were but maybe its best I don't.
Our above normal temperatures have lasted all week so I've been taking advantage of getting in some good flying time. Not much worry about air traffic here unless it has feathers. I took a few shots of the thriving metropolis of Lipton yesterday about sunset.

 Got a load of oats put through the hammer mill for cattle feed giving the old Cockshutt 50 it's regular exercise. After that I removed the pto for what I thought was a simple clutch adjustment but turned out to be more serious. Going to need some expensive parts. That dis assembly operation was one of the lost videos come to think of it. Oh well, guess I get a chance to do it over again.
Drone photo here from earlier this week reminded of my dad's old saying of "fog in the hollow means a fine day to follow". It was true.

Sunset Drive and More

Its way late to be posting videos but I lost a couple of hours due to a "crash dump" of the laptop and it took a bunch of system restore, spybot,crap cleaner, etc to get started again.

I wanted to post an example of my first attempt at the follow me feature of the drone. After figuring out what I had been doing wrong I find it works quite well now. Warmer weather helps too. Frozen fingers do not work well on the control panel. No crashes or actual frostbite yet. More to come.

Learning To Fly

But I ain't got wings. The title of the old  Tom Petty Tune came to mind today while literally learning to fly the drone. Or U.A.V. as they call it . (un-manned air vehicle). I call it a steep learning curve as I went from knowing almost nothing about it last week to being at least capable of taking off, flying and most important, landing, without incident. (Yet). Its a great new angle for photos and videos. I'll never need to pay for an aerial photo again.
Cold weather was not conducive to flying up til yesterday when we saw a major improvement in temperature. Up in the +20s.  Prior to that my fingers would freeze up and battery temp would drop so low as to cause a warning. Plus getting dizzy from walking in circles trying to calibrate the compass. Lucky that only has to be done once and I got a little help with it finally.  I'm sticking with beginners mode for the time being. It allows a ceiling of 90 feet which is pretty good height for most of the photos I want anyway.
It sounds like a swarm of angry bees and scared the cattle away from their feeders.
No doubt I will find some practical uses for it but so far it is just for fun.
In other news my gas heater had to be shut down as Sask Energy's detector found slight gas leaks on all the threaded fittings. Not enough that I could smell it but enough that the auxiliary wall heater has to be shut down and the fittings repaired. Guess I'm losing my sense of smell?