Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Eldo Needs a Hobby

Gulf Shores, AL      High:    76    Low:  50

Sparky thinks Eldo needs a hobby....Eldy says, "I have a hobby---YOU!" No, no, no...That's not going to work. :-)  So every once in awhile, Sparky sees something that might interest Eldy.   Like when something started buzzing overhead today....It sounded like GINORMOUS mosquitoes. Sparky looked for the source of the buzzing. It was a LARGE remote controlled airplane...It was being controlled by a guy a couple of doors down. He had two planes that he was flying today. They were all battery powered, no fuel needed.

One model was shaped like an air force jet, and one was like a Cessna. They were interesting and did some very cool maneuvers. The jet did barrel rolls and all kinds of fancy moves right down the large grassy field just outside our site. It was the perfect place to fly model planes and land them.  Eldo was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to go talk to the guy. Sparky was, and did. (Yep, Sparky will go talk to anybody in a heartbeat.)

Landing at dusk
Here's a little of the scoop for now...The planes the guy was flying were close to 200.00 a piece. The controller was about 150.00, and the guy (didn't catch his name but maybe we will be able to later) is in a club and he trains people how to fly these planes. There's a whole lot more to it than just moving a switch one way or another.  It's actually quite tricky. You should learn on a simulator first, and with an experienced "pilot" he recommends. He talked about certain models will stand up to crashes and be repairable as opposed to other more expensive models that aren't. Sparky asked how many planes he had, and he replied, "Over a hundred." WOW...a serious hobbyist with a lot of money to spend! Is Eldo interested? The verdict is still out on that one. But he's definitely interested in watching. So was Sparky, it looked like fun! He's out there just about every night flying his planes and he is an EXCELLENT pilot with all the aerobatics the planes are doing. And ZERO crashes!
He did a photo op fly by for me :-)
Here's a link to how to learn about flying and what's needed to get into the hobby...It's just one of many, many links to this sport. Flying remote controlled planes

On such a warm day as today, other hobbyists were out in the park. Sparky met a REALLY nice couple making PVC pipe birds as lawn ornaments. Annette and Walt Davis are from Seattle, and they spend their winter months down here in the south making these, then selling them back in Seattle.... We had a great talk about our RVing lives....We even exchanged snake stories! They told me about somebody they knew that went back and forth between Yuma, AZ and Seattle, traveling, and on one occasion, after returning from Yuma, went to have work done on their RV. The tech guys opened up one of the bay doors and were greeted by a lethargic, skinny rattlesnake! Guess he was half dead. That's the only kind of rattlesnake anybody really wants to see, a dead one! Right?  Right!

Sparky's current hobby is TRYING to make pine needle baskets...Not as easy as it looks, but I've got one started. Yay! (Dare I say she's got LOTS of things started?) Yes, honey, you can say that. That's a sign of a true crafter, LOTS of projects going at one time. I do finish one now and then! :-)  But it makes me happy to be creating, even if not everything gets done.

Sparky is also having fun downloading FREE digital books from the Orange Beach Public Library. It's really easy on the Kindle Fire and Sparky is now reading more books in the past week than she has read in the past five years! You just open the Camellia Net website, type in the book you want, if it's available, you click on "Get for Kindle", which takes you to the Amazon website, then you click on "download for Sparks's Kindle" or iphone, or iPad, or whatever you have, and there it is, seconds later on my Kindle. So cool! Good thing it doesn't cost money, it's just too dang easy to get stuff online these days, you know, like that "one click" buying option on Amazon? BAD idea for impulsive shoppers! Not that Sparky is an impulsive shopper, naw........Well, maybe.......She's working on NOT being an impulsive shopper. She hasn't stepped foot in a Michael's or a Hobby Lobby for a month! (That's because there isn't one close by, explains E.)  Sigh.........

We leave December 1 for Sarasota, FL...The days are passing by quickly!  See you tomorrow!


5 comments:

  1. Jim just bought a remote controlled plane at an auction they held here. Once his leg is fixed, then he can get out there and learn to fly it. They hold fly ins a couple times of month down here.

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  2. Lotsa fun with those remote controlled planes, enjoy your warm weather.

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  3. Ahhh, now I see how those pine needle baskets are put together. I had it in my head that each needle would be braided or something :-) Duh :-)

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  4. Those are very tricky to fly. I am a commercial pilot and still have crashed these little ones:( The big problem is practicing can be very expensive in terms of repairs and replacing equipment:)

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  5. I agree with Eldy - I think you are his hobby! :-))))

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