Daily picture

[dreslism]

I have a standing contract with a artificial turf company which does highschool and college stadiums. I live in Michigan, so they don't build in the winter, and they start in the spring and finish end of summer.

They just sent an email the other day about one they are finishing in Kalamazoo area to be shot in august. It is over on the west side of the state, about 2.5 hours from me, but they pay travel and expenses.

Previously I would shoot any shots I wanted, this time they asked for a "50 yard line shot", and an endzone shot. I always gave them endzones before as they were the easiest way to get the whole thing in, and still keep a close intimate feeling.

So, since I have a shoot coming out, I stopped after work today to practice the 50 yard line shot at the local high school which I did previously for them.

Here's a tip. Bring a pair of shorts in the summer time, even if you're just stopping for a quick flight after work. I had to carry the fully loaded heli ( probably 11 pounds) in one hand, and the tripod'd LCD display in the other hand, and the Tx dangling around my neck and walk more than 100 yards to get to the fly spot. Man those blade grips make some really cool indentations in your hand! All this while still wearing my dockers and it was pushing 90 and full sun at this time. Needless to say, I was soaking when I got back to the car after the shoot.

Anyhow, here is the shot. I need a little more tilt in my mount which is being addressed as we speak.

[AZ ChopperCam]

nice! thats quite the high school field! nothing like that at our high schools.

hey Kalamazoo is not too extremely far from my cousin. What days will you be there? I'm going to be in Edwardsburg, MI at his place on Aug 16-22

[dreslism]

Originally Posted by N74DV

nice! thats quite the high school field! nothing like that at our high schools.

Thanks. Yeah these turf systems cost between $500,000 and $1,000,000.
But they are then maintenance free, and it can rain all day and you can play soccer on it at 4:00, and still have the football game on it later that night with no damage to it like on a real grass system.

Originally Posted by N74DV

hey Kalamazoo is not too extremely far from my cousin. What days will you be there? I'm going to be in Edwardsburg, MI at his place on Aug 16-22

Yeah I thought the same thing, a combo road trip.

The company emailed me the other day to ask, and I almost ran out and did it this past weekend, but they were just checking if I could do it in Vicksburg as it is a ways away from here.

They got back to me and said they want me to wait until after the 1st of august as the project is not complete yet.

Not sure if they want it immediately after that, or if I could wait until the week of the 16th.

I'm betting they will be late on the project which will push it towards the 16th even more, and then I can always stall with waiting for the perfect day.

I just checked, 47 miles from vicksburg to edwardsburg. That is a heck of a lot closer than from my house to edwardsburg. :mrgreen:

[AZ ChopperCam]

man if it works out you need to come by. We'll be flying RC planes, full scale planes and maybe even a helicopter ot two the entire week. Lots of room to fly and private.

Sunday is the airshow that is held at his field. about 40 planes fly in and we all have lunch and fly, etc. Chris Bergen says he'll show up that day with his turbine and do some flying. it'll be the perfect weekend to stop by!

[LoopBaCK]

Here's another from the local high school football field. Not as pretty as the one Scott posted but a big improvement over what we used to have...

[AZ ChopperCam]

that's nice. I remember when I lived in Alabama that high school football was every bit important as college or NFL. In fact probably more popular! Out here high school football is about as popular as watching cement cure.

[LoopBaCK]

Yeah... here high school football is as important as air! I'm not a follower but many are.

[dreslism]

Originally Posted by LoopBaCK

Yeah... here high school football is as important as air! I'm not a follower but many are.

Nice shot LoopBack!

I like stadium shots, of course I did about 15 of them last year and they paid very well for me, so I am biased.

You can also tell how important football is to an area based on the surface. I can see you also have artificial turf installed. To me, that is big money for a high school stadium, but as you can see it is also marked off for soccer too.

Lacrosse/field hockey also fits on there.

So in the long run I hear that it is very cost effective to have the turf, but up front cost is big.

Our city did all 3 high schools last summer at the same time, so that was some big money.

[AZ ChopperCam]

shots from a real estate job I did on Friday. yup a mobile home.... uggghhh in the second shot you can seen some rain falling off to the far right. yes, it has been known to rain in AZ from time to time

these were shot with the Raptor. Sold the Voyager and the Logo 10 is not flying yet.

also I "stickied" this post to make it easier to find on a regular basis.

[AZ ChopperCam]

shot these this morning in North Scottsdale. Now these are the kind of homes that are fun to shoot!

[WillJames]

NICE!!

[AZ ChopperCam]

tried an experiment today with google earth. my shot vs. google earth from same position. pretty fun to do!!

[dreslism]

Here are some of my shots of the day.

I am on a 10 day vacation up at my cottage that is on a chain of 5 lakes.

In one of the lakes is a big ole peninsula that sticks out into it. There is no access to it except by boat. No one ever goes on it, except we usually go "exploring" on it and take our kayaks to get over to it and pull them up on the shore. After exploring it, it looked like a great place to fly from as I would be able to shoot all 5 lakes from it. So we loaded up the pontoon boat with the heli, downlink station and all and headed over there.

Here are some shots from that trip.

Here is the AP transport vehicle:



A shot of the lake my cottage is on:



Here is another one that hits pieces of several of the lakes:

[Whirly-Girl]

Scott, that is awesome footage! I think YOU should host an AP meet-n-greet up there. :wink:

[AZ ChopperCam]

damn Scott... those are nice. I need a 10 day vacation too!!!

[WillJames]

WOW Scott, absolutely gorgeous!!

Nice!! Thanks for sharing, happy vacation!!

[dreslism]

Thanks Jeanette,

I think it would be cool to have a fly in, but I am not aware of any other ap'ers in my general area, let alone any up near my cottage which is hours from home.

Thanks DJ, Will, some more for you from today, which turned out to be an amazing day...

Today was my anniversary with my wife. We had plans to have dinner at a favorite restaurant just outside Traverse City, MI, which is about 1-1.5 hours from my cottage. Whenever we eat at this restaurant, we make a day trip to the area from our cottage and hit a beach in the area during the day, then hit the restaurant when they open at 4:00, eat and then head back to our cottage as our dog has been cooped up inside all day while we are gone.

Anyhow, wouldn't you know it, cloudy and crappy looking when we wake up. If it was not our anniversary, I don't think we would have went. We made contingency plans to catch a movie in Traverse City if it was raining, until the restaurant opened it was looking so bad.

Traverse City area is very beautiful, but it is basically on Lake Michigan which is a wide open area and on big water, so it is usually windier than crap out there, and many times AP gets shut out due to unfavorable conditions.

My wife, son, and I head out this morning for the 1.5 hour drive, and had planned on Elk Rapids if it was good, this is a small town on the east arm of the Grand Traverse Bay, where the Elk River dumps into the Grand Traverse Bay, but is far enough up the Bay that the bay is basically turning into Lake Michigan. We had never been there, but my wife's friend has raved about the place to us for years and we have been meaning to try it for years...

As we are driving, it looks like the sky is starting to blue up and the clouds fade away ( ). A short while later while still driving, the clouds are back and it starts raining.

As we get about 10 minutes out from Elk Rapids, the sky opens up to blue and sun, and tons of it.

We park in a local municipal parking lot which only had a few cars, across from the marina and check out mainstreet in this waterfront town.

As my wife is getting a coffee, I go to get the heli setup in the parking lot before the winds get any worse.

About a 3 minute flight is all I got, as it was very windy, and this thing attracted people like I have never seen before. People walking over wanting to talk to me as I'm flying, and cars and motorcycles pulling into the parking lot to see what's going on.

So I just brought it down sooner than I would have liked to, but still happy for the chance.

My wife was running the camera and downlink, and about 8 seconds after I got the heli in the air, I just kept hearing her say "Oh, my gosh!" repeatedly for the next 3 minutes.

The first time she said it, it scared the crap out of me and I was like what? She said "The water, it's so blue!"

Anyhow, I think I am really starting to babble, so here are the picts...

Here is kind of an overview pict, the Elk River comes from the right side of the pict, and they split it off into the marina through some power plant, and down the right side of the picture where it will later dump into the bay.



Overhead shot of the river running throught town where it split off on the right side of the previous picture. The water is only about ankle to knee deep here, so it does not look very colorful as it flows through town here.



A couple shots of the marina with lots of large boats...





Marina breakwall before heading out into the bay...


Another of the breakwall with Mission Peninsula in the background that splits Grand Traverse Bay into the East and West arms.



And finally in the lower left corner, just to the right of the trees, you can see the river where it split to the right in the previous photos dump back out into the bay. It was only about knee deep, but had a good current flowing, you could basically just sit down in the river, and it would float you out into the bay. You can see in the bay, from the end of the river, out until it gets real blue, the water was onlyl knee deep and you could wade out about 100 yards before it got deep.

It was a great place to spend the day, and my son loved it also, and as you can see the weather was fantastic and ended up being 86 and sunny.



When we got back to our cottage tonight, the weather was exactly as it was when we left in the morning, cloudy, grey, and overcast, so this really made it a great day for us knowing we enjoyed a great day when if we would have stayed home we would have had crappy weather all day.

Oh yeah, did I mention how much I lover Mcmasters?

I place an order monday at 10:00 AM and had it shipped to my cottage. Tracking showed fedex should deliver it on Wednesday. It was sitting on my door step when I got back to the cottage tonight! Barely 24 hours and I just got standard ground shipping!

What a topper to an already perfect day.

[Whirly-Girl]

WOW! The blues in the pictures are just GORGEOUS! Your wife had the right response.


BTW, Happy Anniversary!

Jeanette

[AZ ChopperCam]

damn Scott! stop it already! you're making me incredibly jealous! those shots are nothing short of perfection. Don't you just love that Raptor 50???!!!! and to think some folks dog on them like they are crap!

Nice job! quality stuff there!

[dreslism]

Originally Posted by N74DV

damn Scott! stop it already! you're making me incredibly jealous! those shots are nothing short of perfection. Don't you just love that Raptor 50???!!!! and to think some folks dog on them like they are crap!

Nice job! quality stuff there!

Thanks, yes very happy with my Raptor, and sorry, but I can't stop. I'm an addict.

20 minutes after we got back tonight, the good weather followed us home. I was all ready to load up the pontoon boat to head back out to the peninsula in my lakes for a sunset shoot tonight, but I got vetoed as we went for ice cream instead.

Hopefully one night this week yet.