A brief summary of 150 years of Dubuque’s #1 icon, the Shot Tower, a Civil War landmark….
Constructed in 1856 to manufacture lead shot ammunition, the Shot Tower is one of only a few
remaining shot towers in the United States, and the only one west of the Mississippi River. The
120-foot Shot Tower produced lead shot from 1856-58, and then was closed. It was briefly
refurbished for use during the first year of the Civil War. It was used by the Standard Lumber
Company as a fire watchtower from the late 1880s until the company was destroyed in the 1911
lumberyard fire. The tower stood deserted in its post-fire ruin from 1911 to 1959. The 1911 fire
destroyed the original wooden stairs, leaving no ready means to access the tower interior for
maintenance and repairs. In 1960-1961, the tower was repaired using methods that are now
known to promote deterioration. Mayor Roy Buol declared 2006 as the Year of the Shot Tower
in recognition of the structure’s sesquicentennial.
The train that you see in this video was the longest train I have ever seen. It had two engines in the middle of the train to help supply additional power.
Last Sunday afternoon Jeanne and I decided to travel some of the back roads and byways of Eastern Iowa to see if there was anything worthy of a image on my memory card. It was a most enjoyable drive and the weather was almost perfect.
I have a soft spot in my heart for barns and find it difficult to pass up a chance to photograph one. The images on this post look a whole lot better enlarged and more detailed if you click on them.
We ended up in Guttenburg and found this really nice little ice cream shop on main street. The selection was varied and funny that we both ended up selecting the strawberry cheese cake cone.
I also have a problem with passing up and interesting tree. I love the green leaves and especially the fall colors but I do think trees are more interesting when the are “naked.”
Finally ended up in Peosta and had a nice dinner at Round 2. Great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
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.
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.
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!
I apologize for my lack of activity on the blog. I’ve been having some issues with my editor and now I feel like I’ve got them under control.
Actually I spent 45 minutes writing a blog for today only to lose the entire blog with one click of the mouse. So I’m going to try again.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. It was for me one of the best Thanksgivings in memory. It all started when these two great friends from Kansas City, Missouri joined us Wednesday afternoon.
They were on their way to Peoria, Illinois to celebrate Thanksgiving with their Son. They drove seven hours out of their way to come visit with us. Jeanne and Debbie were friends in college and have maintained that friendship over all the years. Terry (her husband) is a great guy
and we get along great.
We took them to dinner at Mario’s Italian Restaurant to give them a taste of one of the local eateries in Dubuque. Terry and I were tired so we retired to our respective beds and the ladies
visited until the wee hours of the night. It was so great to see them.
We celebrated Thanksgiving at Mark and Julia’s new home. Everyone pitched and brought some food and it was a wonderful time. In the image above (from left to right back row) Jeff and Tina Bower (Julia’s parents & her sister) Kelly Bower. Mark and Julia, Ben and Angie.
(seated from left to right) Jeanne, Addie, Joshua, Gabby, Austin, and the old man Upde. We watched a little football, played some cards and just thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.
I’ve been trying to get into videography It’s like trying to learn how to walk again. There was a time a few years ago where I did a lot of videography mainly for training purposes but made a lot of fun videos as well. Some very complex. But as the old adage goes, you either “use it or lose it.” I have severely lost it. The short video below (less than two minutes in length) is jumpy but it took me 90 minutes to put it together from the raw video. Enjoy.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Well I’d have to say there are a lot of people celebrating today. Why? Because I said most of my life that “Hell would freeze over before I ever got a Tattoo.”
I won’t go into the whole story on this blog but my Nephew “Chad Koeplinger” is my only living relative from my side of the family. My Sister, Becky passed when Chad was only 15 and he was more or less faced with finding his way on his own.
Today he is probably one of the top five tattoo artist in the world. He has traveled all 50 states, written 3 books and has traveled to over 60 countries including North Korea. He is truly an amazing individual and owns a tattoo parlor in Nashville, Tennessee and has 7 other artist working for him.
After going through cancer treatment and some other serious health conditions I decided that I wanted Chad to give me a tattoo to help me remember what is most important in my life. Family & Faith.
So today Chad gave me my very first Tattoo. My daughter Angie videotaped the entire experience. It is about 14 minutes long and I know that in today’s society that is almost an eternity. However if you are interested and what to hear some amazing thoughts from this remarkable individual I would hope you spend the time and watch and listen to the video.
The wonderful feeling and emotional uplift I received from this experience was nothing less than remarkable.
Monday I had some physical set backs and it was really difficult to see anything positive in my future. I think a lot of people feel that way sometimes and they cannot find the reason to keep going. Chad gave me that reason.
So I hope you will watch the video and more importantly listen to the conversation and gain some benefit from it.
Jeanne and I took our grand daughters to the splash pad in Asbury, Iowa last night. They had a blast. I didn’t take any still images but did shoot some video. Enjoy.
What a great day yesterday was. I was scheduled to do training for the bulk of the day but late Tuesday afternoon that got rescheduled. Since I had already blocked off the entire day for training I decided I might as well take the day off and tackle the Phantom wiring job. Not that I couldn’t have found something to do at work but this wiring thing has bugged me for a couple of days and I really didn’t know when I was going to be able to find the time to try it again. It’s just too difficult of a project to start at 8:00 p.m. after work.
So as the image above shows it was a complicated process. I decided that I would rip everything that I had done before out and start from scratch. It started by watching the videos again. Then I found a video that gave me a key piece of information. DJI industries color code their wires different then we do. Their ground wire is always brown and their hot wire is either yellow (most of the time) or sometimes orange. That made a big difference in how I approached the wiring project.
I also decided that I was going to disassemble the Phantom. I was going to take the top off and doing the wiring on the inside to get rid of all that extra cable. I have taken a video class on soldering and I felt I had a good knowledge of what to do and how to do it. So one hour later I have all the screws out except one that just won’t come out and one that has been completely stripped. 😦
By this point I’m pretty frustrated. I did some research on how to get a stripped screw out and then went to Lowe’s and got the tools I needed and a bunch of stuff I didn’t need. Back home I finally got the two remaining screws out and disconnected the GPS system, cut wiring harnesses and began the process of tinning the wires, soldering, connecting, and bundling again. After a couple of hours and retracing my steps I was ready to put the top back on and button it up.
It’s actually a pretty neat package. I never have to worry about a battery for the transmitter as it is now powered by the Phantom’s power supply. The video from camera runs through the Zenmuse Gimbal (which also runs off the Phantom’s power supply) and that is then fed to the transmitter and it sends a signal to the FPV device (which in my case are the FatShark Goggles.) Additionally the IOSD Mini reads flight data from the Cambus and sends it through the video feed to the transmitter and is applied over the view you get with the goggles.
I got it all put back together and then decide to put some new decals on that I had ordered from the same company that sold the immersion transmitter.
So now my Phantom looks pretty patriotic which will be nice around the 4th of July. 🙂
Now for the big moment. It’s sitting there all nice and retouched and I know the wiring is correct so it should work unless I fried the goggles or the transmitter. I powered it up and turned on the goggles and nothing but gray screen. But a few clicks on the channel selector and I started getting fuzz and a few more clicks there it was in glorious color with all the flight data you could ever hope to have and then some. Only one problem! All the data is metric. Meters and kilometers and a bunch of other things I don’t recognize. Well it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure there is an easy way to convert to feet and mph. Nope! The website rather arrogantly states that the rest of the world is on the metric system so there is no need to make a conversion fix available.
So it looks like I’m going to have to learn the metric system after all.
Here are the FPV FatShark goggles with the antenna set to the same frequency as the transmitter on the Phantom. It’s pretty cool and a lot easier to fly with these than with a small iPhone screen. 🙂
At one point (I think it was when I stripped the screw) I asked myself what would make this a great day? The answer was to get the wiring all done, the thing put back together and have it work and then take it for a quick flight before the rain came. And that is what happened. There is a video below of a quick flight this afternoon to test everything out and then a merge to a night video I shot on Sunday evening around 9:00 p.m. I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Oh by the way, the video is about 5 minutes long instead of the 7:20 it shows. I made a mistake so it runs empty screen at the end for two minutes. I’ll fix that when I have some time.
Not much for today. I thought I had lost this 46 second clip of the landing. Of course I also thought I kept the camera running as I landed but I didn’t do that either. Anyway I found the clip in a place it should have never been.
The weather was lousy yesterday (at least in my estimation) for still or video. The wind was up around 25 mph gusting to 30 mph so no flying the Phantom. Overcast day so it is very hard to shoot eagles in that type of condition. I opted to take lessons on video editing instead. There is always so much to learn and I love it.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your Monday and be careful.
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