Good Day
I did a quick (4:29) fly over of the 2023 Maquoketa fair. I hope you like it.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Daily Posts
Happy Friday!
This is my Friend Ted Strait, founder and manager of the great Maquoketa Farmer’s Market. He is a man of many talents including former HR Director of a major corporation on the West Coast, a master carpenter, and community leader.
I saw him a week ago at a Rotary meeting and asked him if I could do some aerial and still photography of the Market. He said sure and so this past Tuesday I spent some time at the Market.
What the Market lacks in overall size is more than made up for in a wide variety of things for sale, delicious foods, musical entertainment and great bargains. It is the meeting place of people from Jackson County every Tuesday.
This is Santa and Mrs Claus. This is the first time I have met them. They do a variety of events in and around the Maquoketa area. They have their own FB page, so search FB to learn more about them.
The musical entertainment is provided by “Momma J.” known for her beautiful voice and wild hats.
She modeled these for me while she was taking a break from her singing. Really neat lady.
My friend Sally Davis at the information booth for Alzheimer’s activities. There is a very active group of supporters in Jackson County.
Some of the many vendors are shown below.
And is you made it far, here is a very short video of the Market.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Sunday!
These were the ominous clouds that were over Maquoketa Friday that produced a deluge of rain and wind. Thankfully no hail or sever damage were reported. (you can click on images to reveal a larger and more detailed image.)
So to begin the story, I had a lunch meeting with some valued friends at Noon on Friday. I also had a dinner meeting with another great Friend later in the day. So I brought my camera and drones along to fill up the time between the two meetings.
I stopped at a variety of places to shoot video and drone video and I’ll post those at a later date. All the time I was capturing images and video I noticed the clouds building up and getting more and more foreboding.
As I headed back to town I noticed a group of farm tractors traveling in line so I decided to follow them. Turns out there was a large numbers of tractors that had been traveling through some towns in Jackson County and they had all stopped at Maquoketa High School, presumably for dinner.
Well I thought this would be a wonderful video for the drone to fly over so I parked about a block away so I wouldn’t be in the way and launched my drone
Well this is what happened. The drones have forward, backward, and downward safety sensors but not sideways sensors. So I backed the drone up to get all the shot and slide into the side of one of the legs of the tower.
So I had to walk about a block and a half to see if I could find the drone. I found it alright but it was behind the fence that protected the water tower. I could see that it was missing one of it props but hoped I could fly it out of the grass and the fence. NOPE!
So I called a dear friend of mine who called one of the city crews. So thanks to my friends Chris and Shelby plus Jeff who was so gracious to interrupt his day off to help me I was able to retrieve my crashed drone.
Now for the good news. The prop that I thought had broken off was just folded into the side and was just find. Very minor body damage to the drone itself. After three hours of drying and installing new propellers on the drone it was ready to fly again.
That’s it. Like a friend of mine said if you fly drones enough you’re going to crash one. Unfortunately I’ve had more than my share of crashes. A dear Friend of mine might say that people like me shouldn’t have drones. 🙂
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Friday!
I have photographed the Maquoketa Dam many times over the last 20 + years. I finally decided to fly my drone over the dam to see just what was on the other side. Short video about 3 minutes.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Monday!
This magnificent church is St. Lawrence Parish, located near Otter Creek, Iowa. I have photographed it many times over the years because of its stately structure and I just love the way it looks. Having said that, I have often wanted to see it from a different vantage point and now that I’m back to flying drones I can finally accomplish that.
It’s one thing to stand on the side of a road and take pictures of a structure (or whatever it is) it’s quite another thing (in my mind anyway) to actually go on the property and fly around a structure.
So I stopped by the parish a couple of times but couldn’t raise anyone. Fortunately last week as I was coming back from Maquoketa, I stopped again and was greeted by a friendly pastor. He was very gracious and gave me permission to fly and photograph this wonderful structure.
I hope you enjoy this short video of St. Lawrence Parish.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Sunday!
Yesterday we got to spend a little time with our new Grand Son. Mark and Julia were gracious with their time and let me and Jeanne spend some quality time with Brooks.
Jeanne hasn’t lost her touch with babies. He was asleep most of the time we were there, but its so much fun just to spend some time with him and watching all the moves he makes and the little sounds.
It is such an amazing thing for me to look at my Son and see him with his own child. Brooks is just a very lucky little guy to have Mark and Julia as his parents.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Thursday!
Below you will find a short drone video of Maquoketa, Iowa. I’m working on a project and this was some spare footage that I had and I liked it so I made a video for this blog.
Hope you enjoy it.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Monday!
Yesterday Jeanne and I went for a drive in the country side. We ended up at Mud Lake Park. I was up there a few weeks ago and the park was closed because of flooding. It was nice to see the park open again and the camping area all cleaned up.
I had a drone with me so decided it was a good day to fly and show some of the debris that has piled up along the shore from all the flooding.
This video is a little over 13 minutes so it’s a little long bur pretty scenery!
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Tuesday
This past Saturday was the annual Grandview Gallop. As usual Angie and Ben ran in the 4K event and it draws a lot of people from around the city and surrounding area.
The place I normally camp out to photograph the runners is very close to the Start/Stop line. Unfortunately in order to get there I would have to park over a mile away and the walk is all up hill. I just can’t do that in my current physical condition.
So I had to find a new position. I lucked out in parking about the halfway mark and no walking. While I was setting up my equipment this wonderful little boy and his Mom were there and they were very friendly. He doesn’t have his hat on in this image but he was dressed as Mario and had a party to go to later on.
So I spent about 20 minutes setting up my camera drone to get the best shot possible. Once I had the settings correct I had to change batteries because all that set up time had drained the battery. I could see the runners approaching, so I launched the drone about 20 feet in the air so I could get a good view of all the runners and then I was going to edit the video to highlight Angie, Joshua, Ben, and Gabby.
Sadly in my haste to get everything set up I forgot to push the record button on the camera and so it hovered for 35 minutes without capturing one inch of video. 😦
Fortunately, I still had my still camera with me and could capture Angie and Joshua.
Also Ben and Gabby. So I got to see the family run I wasn’t able to get any drone footage. I guess I still need some practice.
Angie ran with Austin in the one mile event and Ben ran with Addie in the one mile event. I was too far away to capture those moments.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Wednesday!
I use to fly drones a lot, a few years ago. They were much more difficult to fly and had very few safety features. I had several crashes during my time, some of which were my fault and some were system errors.
I had enough problems with them that I finally stopped flying drones altogether. I have to admit, that even with all the problems, I did have fun with the drones and did some neat things with them.
Now fast forward to 2023 and the whole drone system is drastically changed (I think for the better.) Now the drones are much smaller (most of them) and they have a lot of built in safety systems, including hazard avoidance (front, back, and sideways.) Additionally your can make inputs to the system which will let the drone fly itself with very little action by you.
Having said all that, there is a lot of new stuff to learn and some things to unlearn. I’m still practicing my flying skills and getting there slowly. Below you will find a short video I filmed of my drone flight over Asbury, Iowa last night. I hope you like it.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
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