Deal's Gap

Not much has happened with the car.  Nothing, in fact.  Put gas in and drove it--all the way to North Carolina!  Unfortunately, the weather was a little cold and it rained all Friday night, but I still had a good time!  I left the house at 6.30am and drove top down all the way with a stop in Lexington for breakfast with a friend I was doing a caravan with to get there.  I finally arrived at my cabin at Nantahala Village at 3.30pm, totally pooped!

I managed to get some driving done despite the rain.  Here is a shot of me on my way in, just up the hill from the Crossroads and the Motorcycle Resort.  I actually made the front page of Killboy.com, but was pretty far in the background (or in the front, depending on where you were standing):

Squint reeeeeeal hard and you'll see me heading around the bend!

I also went fishing with some of my friends while I was down there.  Admittedly, I've fished about twice in my life, so "rusty" was not the word!  However, after a couple hours, I managed to reel this one in:

Yeah...it's tiny, but at least I got to eat it!

I even got to fly my Solo Pro in the cabin!

A long overdue update, Pt. 1

Not too much has happened with the car, aside from some audio upgrades I'll be covering in the next post.

Here are some shots of the car along with some folks you might recognize at CR@TG '10.

First off, it snowed on the way in!


CR@TG 2010 001 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

CR@TG 2010 004 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

I didn't take many pictures, but here's one Taylor got of Christy and I. It's one of our favorites!


DSC_7271 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

Shots taken on the way out from the Motorcycle Resort:


CR@TG 2010 005 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

CR@TG 2010 006 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

CR@TG 2010 010 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

Oy! Who are these, then?  

(For those who don't know, the car on the right famous Blue Potato owned by Peter Brusa and the Sweet Potato owned by his wife Ginger, both friends of Christy and I).


CR@TG 2010 012 by bryanewyatt, on Flickr

RC'ing over New Year's

After celebrating Christmas with my family (with many thumbs up), we went to Texas to spend New Year's with Christy's family.  I was really looking forward to the trip because I love getting to see my nieces and nephew, but this trip was extra cool because I was finally going to get to meet the little gal that Christy's middle sis and her hubby adopted!

I'll let Christy and her middle sister (yay, btw, for middle children!) tell you the rest of the story with her family went (short version, it went very well).  Instead, I'll tell you about another part of our trip: RC'ing!

The last time Christy and I went to Texas for Thanksgiving, her dad surprised me by unveiling a plane he'd made based on a color scheme I'd modeled on the RealFlight RC simulator.  The plane was a 38" Yak-54 sold by DWFoamies.  He'd already put the airframe together and I did the stripes on wing.  I also helped add the various electrics and the engine as well as the landing gear.  Here is the finished product: the Yak-2!

Christy's dad called it the Yak-2 because it was the 2nd DW Yak-54 he built--the first was still flying, though heavily patched.  In fact, the Yak-1 was the first of the two I got to fly.  I left after Thanksgiving with the plane assembled but its first test flight had not yet taken place--my father-in-law reserved that honor for me on my next visit!

On New Year's Eve, we met up with some of his friends to do some flying.  Here was my debut in front of my father-in-law (doing the filming), his boss, and one of the project managers for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:

I couldn't have been more pleased with how it went!  The second flight went pretty well, though I nosed over on landing.  The third flight was on video, though--with a perfect landing!

Needless to say, I was pretty pumped!  In the meantime, we added a battery strap to hold down the battery instead of the velcro pad that held it down previously.  We liked the feature so much that we retrofitted it to the Yak-1:

 

 

Unfortunately, it was not meant to last...Statistically, the longer you fly without an accident, the more likely you are to have one.

It only took two days for me. 

I crashed the plane nose-first into a parking lot following a flight that'd been going great.  I'll have the video later, but it appears from the pic below that the elevator ripped in two during one of my flights on a somewhat windy day, causing a loss of control.  

Here're some of the pics:

 

Thankfully, my father-in-law is a very easygoing guy and reassured me that foamies are very rebuildable, as the Yak-1 can testify (man, I wish I'd have gotten a close-up of it!).  I started working on it that same night:

 

 

As of yesterday morning, the plane was completely ready for an engine test and then another flight test.  Perhaps I'll have the honor of doing a first test flight for the second time!

To close, I'll leave you with a couple pics of my father-in-law's fleet as well as some of his friends.  I really had a great time and look forward to maybe one day building my own plane!

Live from Vienna, Austria - HGM, Reumannplatz, and Alisha and Brian's Office

Christy's dad and I went to the Museum of Military History yesterday as sort of a guys' activity. Me in a museum is like a kid in a candy shop--even if most of the exhibits are noted in another language! We really had a good time and I took LOOOOOTS of pictures...here are a few:


Here's the car Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in that basically started WWI:

The upper turret and one of the rudders from a B-24 Liberator shot down during WWII:

The first production Albatros BI reconnaissance aircraft:

The funeral arrangements for Prince Eugene of Savoy:

The museum is housed in the center of what once was the arsenal of the Austrian army as seen in the two photos below:

The halls of the building contain beautiful frescoes commemorating Austria's imperial history under the Hapsburgs, some of which I tried to take photos of. These do not do justice to just how amazing they look in person!

It also contains many statues, many of which are of various figures in the empire and can be found in the entrance hall:

The museum contained many artifacts that are multiple centuries old, which simply blows my mind. How many times to you get to see 400 year old flags?

Okay, enough gushing about the museum. Time to move on and cover the rest of the day!

We met up with Christy and Alisha and took the U-bahn over to Reumannplatz to go to Tichy (Tee-kee) Eis Salon, one of the better ice cream joints in town (there are lots, by the way!). While we were eating our ice cream in the park nearby, I got up to take a couple pictures:

I last snapped a shot of the memorial to the victims of Fascism 1933-1945

Once we got back to Alisha and Brian's place, we decided later to head out to the mission office. While we were walking along, I decided to play with the low-light settings on the camera. Most of the shots turned out bad and were trashed, but some I kept:

After a short walk, we arrived at the newly painted office and had a look around.

We got to ride on the S-bahn (Strassenbahn) back to the U-bahn station. On the walk back to the apartment, we found that a group of snails had decided to have a race. Man, this city has everything!

One parting shot for tonight...the valiant Sharkdog (the coolest Beagle I've ever met):

Live from Vienna, Austria - Leopoldsberg and Centimeter (or, How to Eat Your Meal On a Sword!)

Busy days abound!

Today, we went up to Leopoldsberg to have a look at the city from a different perspective. Unfortunately, it was a little hazier than we'd hoped, but I was still able to get some decent pictures. I was just bowled over by how beautiful the area is around Vienna. I was just as impressed by how densely packed people are here. Houses, apartments, shops, and cafés--all of them are just stuck wherever there's space; the streets are quite narrow as a result. However, folks always seem to be either moving about or sharing a conversation at a café everywhere you look. It's a very different lifestyle from what I'm used to at home. Anyway, here are a couple pictures from Leopoldsberg:

After we came back down, we met up with Brian and went over to Centimeter V where we enjoyed Das Schwert, a meal of Weiner Schnitzel and porkchops on a sword over French Fries, Chicken Wings, and Chile Con Carne. It was quite a meal!

Stuffed, we decided to head for home. Unfortunately, there was a problem with one of the U-bahn trains that caused a delay. What that meant was that the train was so full that the last person barely fit in the door (and no, this photo doesn't really do that notion justice):

We ended up hopping a different train and barely even fit on that one!

(that's Christy's dad 2nd from the left behind the post next to the next door on the train)