Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Geese friends stop by this time of year.

Angie was confirmed this past week at the Episcopal Cathedral in Atlanta. It was a good excuse to head downtown to the 73rd floor of the Westin hotel to celebrate.

Thanksgiving 2016 is over and almost all of 2016 as well. The older you get the faster time moves. Lets face it. Each day is less of a percentage of my entire memory of my life. Ratios have a way of making a reality. My brother James and I with my plane. A very large (crazy large) lemon from Florida.

I have a cold. I am getting better at dealing with colds. Avoiding over-the-counter remedies is a good first step. Either they don't work or the side effects are worse than the symptoms. I need to use my neti pot more regularly, and avoid life I suppose. So, I got to catch up on YouTube videos, clean the basement. Cook chili, enjoy the fall foliage. We had our first fire for the season. It is not really cold, but the furnace has come on, time to burn wood, not gas.

Fall is in the air here in Georgia. It has been a great fall for weather to be sure. Our roses are doing very well. It appears the deer have decided to eat other tasty bits in the yard besides the rose buds, saving the roses for our pleasure. The dock is now pretty much reconstructed. Small lake. Large dock. A lot of wood. A lot of fasteners. We used 15 gallons of paint. It could probably use another coat too. It was a good day for plane watching/spotting with the helos and army folks with the King Air. We also saw the immediate aftermath of an incident at Athens airport. The word was the nose gear collapsed after continued taxing after a flat tire. Pure hanger talk, but we were there. The airport has two runways so we could use the runway 2-20 as the main runway 9-27 was closed.

I completed my bi-annual flight review this week. Every two years a private pilot must receive ground instruction and a flight review. Just to keep my license. It was good. I hadn't flown my plane that hard previously (no reason to) and I was very satisfied with how well this plane behaves. We should do a similar check-out with car licenses. It will help save lives. Fatal car accidents are real and the numbers are staggering. I think we have almost two thousand deaths in Georgia alone just this year so far. While at the same time if a single engine plane crashes it makes national news, even without a fatality. I am not sure why the media ignores car fatalities and aggrandizes aviation fatalities. I find it very distasteful.

A lot of travel in western Europe. I was surprised with fascination Europeans have with the US election. It had come up in conversation everywhere, Italy, France, Germany, England.

We had dinner with my friend Dennis last night as he was in Atlanta for a couple of days. We didn't seem to get a picture though. On the drive home we saw a very large fire very close to where a plane went down 1.5 years ago. My blog post from last year. The official NTSB report was just completed a few weeks ago. NTSB report. The take away I got was to maintain your aircraft and have a mechanic you trust. Your life depends on it. The fire on the highway this time was JUST a semi truck burning up.

I was in Florida and Kansas in the last few days. I got to meet my dream engine for my dream yacht. Although the yacht requires two of these babies. I do like the idea of an engine room with tools and spares for emergencies, as well as cameras you can see from the helm or stateroom.

I am enjoying a few days off. Working with Europeans with lots of vacation time, It is tough not to enjoy the vacation and holidays I do get. The following is a simple project, practicing with the drone and editing software.

I have been flying the drone. Here is a pic of the Duluth City Hall.

Its a start. I am Mr. Cautious. I don't want crash the thing nor get arrested, learning the boundaries.

I worked in the heat today to get my irrigation lawn/garden system going, finally. I rebuilt a used 2 hp pump I bought 2nd hand and pieced together a lot of other broken stuff. Now at least, I have water coming out of the ground. Now I an trying to figure the underground piping system out. My first drone picture and the second. The video is absolutely amazing. I am really looking forward to what this thing uncovers. Unbelievable. Much more to follow.