schmenzer speaks!

The Pirate Party 2007 happened on Friday, July 13th, 2007. It was quite a spectacle as it was held on a barge anchored out in the Milwaukee Harbor as well as two tour boats that were moored to the barge.

The barge held the stage where both live bands and DJs played as well as the Riptide catered food area.

The tour boats added the bar areas and some great vantage points to watch the action.

Pirates, fire dancers, bands, DJs, drinks and friends. What a great event!

Check out pix here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasmith/sets/72157600951460213/

I love the time lapse photos of the fire dancers and of Danin, one of the DJs.

Well, on the first day I drove, to Virginia, then to the Carlisle, PA for the Polecat Aero Challenge.

So, on the second day of my summer vacation, I woke up. I went down to the flying field to fly my DLG. Then I landed out. Well, not too often and the Polecat Aero Challenge was a really fun event.

In the past I tried Hand Launch a few times and have owned a few HLGs and DLGs that mostly got flown at the slope, either in light winds, or on days when there was no wind at all but this was my first contest and it was a lot more fun than I was expecting. The tasks were varied, challenging and fun and the guys, several of whom are among the best in the world, are excellent resources for an on the flats sloper.

In the end I’ll always be a sloper first but I see a few more hand launch contests in my future.

I’ve been using Flock on and off for a while and like many of the unique features for interacting with blogs, photo sites and the like but have not really made much use of its power yet. I’ve still been using Ecto to post to the blog most of the time and posting photos directly to Flickr from within Aperture via the Flickr Export plugin. still, the integrated nature of Flock has me intrigued so I’ll give it a go for a while.

Well, that was my Flock post only it wouldn’t post. The connection to the blog seemed OK but there seems to be an issue with getting the categories. I’ll be looking into it.

Meanwhile it is back to Ecto!

Technorati Tags: ecto

I wrote a little blurb about a question we get asked often at the slope when we are flying our slope gliders, “do those things have motors?”. It seems to be a great way to get the conversation going about how slope soaring works. Check it out if you are interested.

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Gotta give this a go!

The Soar Milwaukee site is up and running. I am still working on some features but mostly gathering content. Soar Milwaukee is the website for the Milwaukee Soaring Group, an AMA chartered model aircraft flying club.

As part of getting the club going again I set up a Flickr Group for posting photos of RC soaring activity in and around Milwaukee, WI.

Soar Milwaukee Flickr Group