Tuesday, February 16, 2010

ChaserCon 2010 (2/14)

I attended the National Storm Chaser Convention (ChaserCon) in Denver, Colorado from Febuary 12-14, 2010. This event continues to be a "must-not-miss" event for storm chasers year after year. This year was a very impressive turnout and I have put together some pictures of the event in my STORM CHASING EVENTS area on this site.



You can also jump right to the area for storm chasing events in 2010, including the storm chaser convention, by clicking the link provided for it below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/picnic10.htm

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Skydiving / L-39 Jet Fighter (1/30)

The last week in January is the weekend for the annual "Boogie Over The Everglades" event at Air Adventures Skydiving in Clewiston, Florida. This weekend is full of great skydives, great people, and great aircraft.



In the image above, I am aboard an L-39 fighter jet pulling near 7 G's and travelling near 500-MPH! This event keeps getting better and better each year. Read more about it (as well as more updates) at the SKYDIVING section of this web site.



In the additional images above, we see some of the activities at the onece-a-year Everglades Boogie. Althouth the weather was bad for almost half the event, we all still had a great time and made up for it the best we could, with one jump from nearly 23,000 feet!

You can also check out the FLYING section of this site, with more details on the L-39 jet by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/flying.htm

For more information on skydiving and boogies (events) such as this one, be sure to check out my section on skydiving below via the link...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/skydive.htm

You want to see what its like to RIDE ABOARD a jet fighter? Glad you asked ... Check out the video link (to YouTube) provided for it below...

www.sky-chaser.com/l39vid.htm

A Bullying Subject (1/24)

Ever wonder where your kids are, or what might be happening to them? School yard violence and bullying is no laughing matter, as a matter of fact, it can turn deadly. Read about this report (including personal experiences and important advice) regarding bullying and how a parent (and child) can properly deal with it before its too late in my AMERICA section of this site.



You can jump right to the section on AMERICA and school "bullying" by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/america.htm

Frost In South FL (1/11)

In the images below, taken a day or so later, with temperatures still near freezing - even in Miami, Florida - Frost covers the vehicles in the morning and the ice needed to be scraped from the windshields! This was one time I regretted throwing away my ice scraper I used every day a couple of years back when working in Chicago in the winter ... This would have come in handy as it is not easy to scrape off ice using my fingernails!



Hopefully storm chasing will take a turn for the better (for me at least) in 2010 (hopefully putting 2009 behind us, right?) ... My chase logs for 2009 are on-line and can be viewed in the STORM-CHASING section of this web site. You can also jump right to this area by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/stlog.htm

Cold Southern New Year (1/9)

The first couple of weeks of the new year of 2010 have been plagued with bitterly cold weather over much of the US. Folks coming south to the tropics to escape the cold have to travel WELL into the tropics, as some of this Canadian air has penetrated as far south as Central America! In the images below, taken on January 9, 2010 in Deerfield Beach, Florida ... Something appears very strange with the Atlantic Ocean.



Steam fog is rising from the water, which is about 75 degrees F, in chilly air that is hovering just above 40 degrees F! A temperature differential of nearly 40 degrees causes the relatively warmer ocean water to "steam". This is in South Florida in the afternoon, and the beach normally packed with tourists is completely deserted. Cold spells lasting this long (over a week) are unusual. Snow flurries were even reported farther north in the state!

Digital Conversion (1/7)

Is going digital totally worth it? If you have the time and make the effort, the short answer is YES ... In the images above, over 220 audio tapes containing music, diary, chase logs, and sentimental memories were painstakingly digitized and re-mastered over 4 months time to 221 separate 64 Kbps MP3 files, totalling about 6.5 GB in hard-drive space. The pile of 220+ tapes can be seen surrounding a tiny 8 GB thumb drive (USB drive).



All the tapes, once digitized, can be stored entirely on the 8 GB drive, with much room (over 1 GB) to spare! To the right is the thumb drive in front of the old analog recorder (barely working) and a newer digital voice recorder to it's right (tapeless recorder that saves MP3 files in stereo). The tapes and old analog equipment can be scrapped, and the digital media used instead. The digital media can also be easily copied, backed up, burned to CD / DVD, with no need to search, rewind, cue, etc.

Digital conversion can also involve scanning old photographs and cleaning them up, and / or converting video to tapeless format (such as VHS to DVD and such). This is the way to go to preserve un-reliable / old recording media and the memories cherished with it.