Reno Air Race Aftermath

I found a story from Reno's ABC-TV affiliate KOLO8 on the attendance at this year's Reno Air Races to be a little off" from years past, but the story doesn't give any numbers...the numbers they do report are staggering. RARA's insurance premium went up more than six times! From $300K to $2Million

That ain't hay!

 New Camera Update: 
Without time pressure from the Air Race schedule, I had the time back at the DaveCave to diagnose the new camera’s problem. When making 1080i videos, there’s a visible spot just to the right of the center of the image. It’s in the top third of the field of view, so it’s really obvious when the sky is the top half of the images…

After Thursday’s action, I found a speck of who knows what on the lens. A spritz of Windex on a Q-Tip, a little rubbing then dried with a special No-Lint microfiber LCD Cleaner Cloth, and I was good to go for Friday.

I didn’t drag the computer out to the show Friday because the car would be parked in a lot far from my location until I headed out to the Fenceline after noon, so I didn’t see the blemish again until I got home and downloaded the photos and videos…the blemish was still there…

Interestingly, the blotch doesn’t show in the still photos, or in videos made at 720i, just at Full HD…exactly why I bought the thing! I hope getting a replacement camera isn’t a long drawn out story

Precious Metal Update:

When I last saw Precious Metal, she was turning on final to land after losing a landing gear door on lap three of the Breitling Gold Race Sunday afternoon. PreciousMetal’s Facebook fan page reports:

“Hi all, yes we were forced to mayday out of yesterday's Gold final. Ended up 7th but could have taken 3rd had the right clamshell gear door not blown off during the start. Apparently a spring broke on the uplock mechanism and allowed it to open up. No wonder we don't operate the gear over 170...

The airplane will be ferried to Teeters shop in Salinas this afternoon for repairs. We'll keep you all updated.”

Autumnal Light

Regular readers will remember that every year I write about seeing with my own eyes the first traces of what I call the Autumnal Light out a the races. Um, that was a No-Go this year. It could have been the high cirrus cloud deck early in the week, or the smoke haze for the weekend. Tuesday morning, there's a snap of Fall in the air and the haze is still hanging in around Truckee.

 Evening Camera Update: 

Well I spent another hour trying to clean whatever’s mucking up my images on the WB750. With an illuminated magnifying glass and a can of compressed air, I Q-Tip-ed and Windex-ed, blew DustOff into every possible orifice…all to no avail. She’s going back to sender just as soon as I have a secure broadband connection.