Category Archives: YouTube

Motorcycles, Ride Reports, Santa Cruz, YouTube

Riding the California Coast – Pacific Coast Highway (17-NOV-2013)

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If you ride a motorcycle, and have never been to California, you are truly missing out on one of the best places in the United States to ride a motorcycle. PERIOD.

Here a few photos from various places along a ride I took yesterday from Santa Cruz, CA, to Lucia,CA:

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Being an MC ride, there are few opportunities along the way to take photos, but amongst the group we did mange to snap off a few.

We first gathered here at Lighthouse Harbor Grille in Moss Landing:

We met up with the remainder of the group in Carmel.

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We gassed up the bikes and prepared ourselves (with more caffeine of course) for what was about to transpire. Rich (on the 916) took the time to model his man-sack for us. I hear it’s last word in manly riding apparel for the Central Coast.

From here on our, it was Ride like the Wind all the way to Lucia. We did stop once to regroup, turn on the video cameras and discuss the awesomeness so far:

The first of many great surprises on this ride, was our lunch destination in Lucia. Ah.. what a view! What a great place to relax after a spirited ride up Hwy 1.

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Return ride Video:

Next stop. Nepenthe in Big Sur. Despite a hair raising incident with an inattentive tourist in a rental car, we made it there without obvious injury. Despite the fact that the highway was the destination and the star of the day, this pulled off a pretty convincing 2nd place.:

What a fantastic ride today. Perfectly organized (or properly disorganized?) group. It’s always a blast to right with these guys and gals. Looking forward to our next epic excursion!!

PS. Video will be added to the blog as soon as I can clear 132 GB of space on a computer, somewhere.

Santa Cruz, Technology, YouTube

Dash Cam Test Run – Santa Cruz to SJC, CA

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Sunday afternoon, I mounted my new $25 dash cam (purchased 2 of them from Amazon, $25 each to my door, I figured why not!) inside the windshield of my 2002 BMW ///M3 Convertible, and drove from Santa Cruz to San Jose (SJC airport) California.

Highway 17, has earned this dubious distinction as the most dangerous highway in California. With it’s steep decent from it’s 1800′ Santa Cruz Mountains summit to the Santa Clara Valley Floor below, it’s often this site of injury and fatality crashes.

Audio in the clip is horrible, and unedited. Wind noise due to the top on car being down, plus the fact I was wasting no time on “The Hill“.

While growing up in “The Valley”, heading over the hill to Santa Cruz always seemed like such a journey. Families would pack up food and drink to make it over the mountain. In reality, it’s a fairly short dive (about 20 miles) but back in the 70’s when I grew up, summer time temps well into the 90’s, combined with the fairly steep ascent to the summit (at 1800′) meant there was a pretty good chance you’d be taking a break in one of the turnouts while the car’s radiator cooled off enough to continue the drive. Using A/C on the hill was basically an impossibility, unless you enjoyed being temporarily stranded on the side of the highway while possibly awaiting a tow hook.

As I grew older, cars were built better, and I was able to afford these better cars, the drive to the beach became less and less an practice of gambling upon one’s luck, and simply being able to afford a 1/2 tank of gas on a high school or college student’s budget.

Aviation, Military, photography, Uncategorized, YouTube

California International Air Show 2011

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It was a warm and sunny day along the California Coast for the last day of the California International Air Show, in Salinas CA. Only 45 minutes south of my friend’s hose in Santa Cruz, CA. it was easy to plug this event into the last day of my vacation.

After 2 weeks in the sun, I needed some shade. Another full day in the sun and I’d likely return home with a burn, so I lobbied to purchase the VIP Flight Deck tickets. It was an easy sell. The flight demonstration teams always work in a couple of extra tricks right in front of the VIP seating areas, and we’re at an air show after all. Accommodations where good. Food, snacks, soft drinks and a fully bar were all at our disposal, and the first round of drinks were included in the price.

The performances were great. Plenty of jet action in the air.

One of the highlights of the show was the TORA TORA TORA performance. It’s a 10 minute show using aircraft from the original 1970 movie TORA TORA TORA. It’s a sight to see, so I’ve uploaded video shot with my little Canon camera set on the fence (it get’s bumped a few times so the framing missed the final WALL of FIRE, which I found unfortunate).

When the SnowCones took to the air, we decided to move onto the static displays. I’ve seen the very polite and nearly silent (and I’m sure very environmentally conscious) SnowCones enough times to fall asleep during their show. I had a 900 mile drive ahead of me that night, and I needed to remain alert. Oddly the couple of times I looked up into the sky, they always seemed to be speedily (albiet quietly) flying away… hm… I wonder if they are all French Canadians…).

So off to more interesting things likes Cessnas and Piper Cubs.

automotive, YouTube

Amazing VW ‘Glass Factory’

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Thanks to the mail list I’m on, this video appeared in my mailbox today. It’s a 6 1/2 minute (you won’t believe it how quickly you find it’s over) tour of a new VW factory in Dresden Germany.

Give it a watch. Although I’ve only had one VW, this same ‘passion’ (can that be used for Germans?) for construction of cars is why I never buy anything else.

Enjoy.

Helicopters, Radio Control, YouTube

N450V2A – Hover Testing

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Finally, it was time to see if this thing would fly. And, if I can fly it!

This outing was my best yet! 3 full packs flown, no crashes, no rotor strikes, and only 1 really hard landing! I (of course) shot some video and uploaded it to my YouTube bucket.

Not never exciting to watch, it was pretty exciting to get it off the ground without flying back into it out of control! This is pretty fun stuff! Plus the gear-head part of me really loves all the micro-mechanical parts and seeing how they function together and make it fly!

automotive, YouTube

Two of my favorite Porsche ads, ever.

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The first one was basically me. On the wall of my bedroom, I have a pencil drawing of a 911 I did in high school.

My Porsche drawing from 1981

VIDEO: → Porsche – The Boy

The second is the introduction video for the 993 (that last one I owned, so far). The cool thing was that I’d found the audio for the video, tossed it on my iPod and played it on my trip to CA. It just happened to start playing these tracks as I drive through the tree archway into Napa on a great sunny day. One of those top-25 memories I’ll die with.

VIDEO: →993-Are You Listening (1995)

Helicopters, Radio Control, YouTube

MadHawk300 hover practice, however I killed tail drive.

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OK, this is frustrating. 20 some odd flights and the thing’s rear motor is going out. There is a dead spot in it, so, somethings on a hard right yaw, the motor does not start back up and it spins into the ground, breaking… more stuff.

I did manage to get in some good practice on the day before though:
WATCH VIDEO: MadHawk 300 Hover Practice

So I’ve started to research updates to this rear drive issue, and the lack of power in the main motor (seems to be losing power, turning freer than it should.. seems like it cooked too, too much hover practice and not enough cooling airflow?).

At any rate, I found this info on the Walkera 180 (same heli, different brand name) that might get me a really sweet flying ‘learner’ heli for friends and family.

I got this info off the RCGroups forum [LINK]:

CB180Q Conversion to Brushless
8g Outrunner – brushless C10 (2S)- 180 Serie
Tail Gear Holder from Q for Brushless direkt drive
26g Outrunner -brushless C20 around 4000 KV
pinion 16 T(metal) Modul 0,3, hole 2,3mm
20A ESC for Main-Motor
12 A ESC for Tail-Motor
Gyro WK-016 Gyro 8g 4-6V

RX 2801PRO
TX 2801PRO
good Lipo around 1200 to 1500 mAh

Here is another thread [LINK] with similar solution. It might be overkill for what I want to do.

Another idea on 'fixing' the MadHawk300 shortcomings.