Introduction
On Earth Day (4/22/18), I gave a presentation on Visualizing Climate Change to the Atlanta Tableau User’s Group (ATUG). The presentation was held at the Delta Airlines Museum, which gave me the motivation to write this article.
The Flying Nun
When I was young, the Flying Nun (1967-1970) captivated me and began my life-long obsession with flying. My flying Nun fascination was so intense that I can still recall the recurring dreams I had of taking off and flying, just like Sally Field did in the TV show. In fact, in my dreams, I wore the same hat that she did. The views I had in those dreams are just like those we now get when using Google Earth or Google Maps.
Many years later, looking back in retrospect, I now know that flying objects have been an area of interest for me from my early days.
Free-Flight Planes
I was about 14 or 15 (with a lot more hair!) when I built my first flying airplane. It wasn’t much, but it sure did fly great! That plane is shown in Figure 1. It is that little yellow Piper Cub airplane shown on the ground.
Figure 1 – The little yellow Piper Cub I built in the 1970’s.
At that time, we didn’t have any radio-controlled equipment. We just let the planes perform a “free flight”. By putting only a little bit of fuel in the engine, the plane would rise in the sky and then would glide back to earth.
My first free-flight plane was great fun to fly at the local forest preserve. Although we got many great flights out of it, the final mistake I made with it was to put too much gas in the tank.
During the next flight, it rose too high into the sky. It traveled over a mile before landing directly in the middle of a secure military base! I could only imagine what the soldiers thought when they saw that little yellow plane attacking them from the sky, completely in stealth mode with no motor running!
Progressing to Radio-Controlled Planes
When I was a teenager, I built radio controlled planes and boats. I have a lot of stories about those years, but I want to keep this short. Figure 2 shows one of the first radio-controlled planes I built. This was constructed from a kit that required many weeks of painstaking assembly. It was always a dream of mine to put cameras on the planes I built and to control the cameras using the radio equipment.
Figure 2 – One of my first radio-controlled planes. This was a stable flyer, built of balsa wood and covered in red and black monokote.
Figure 3 shows the “Lost Weekend” boat I built. I filled this hollow fiberglass boat with expanding foam so that the boat could never sink. It was a pleasure to drive this boat and it gave us many great afternoons of fun during the hot summer days.
Figure 3 – The Lost Weekend fiberglass boat I built. I learned to construct things using fiberglass and had a great time running this boat on many different lakes in IL and WI.
Fast Forward About 40 Years
My wife consistently hears me droning about the following topic: Drones!
Here is a typical conversation. I’ll say to her: “Let’s see how far we get in this movie before we see the customary drone footage!” I say this because movie makers are in love with drones. I can’t say that I blame them. In every movie we watch, we have the same dialog as some overhead aerial footage captured by drones is shown at the beginning of the film.
This technique isn’t new, however. Even in the first episode of the Flying Nun in 1967, helicopters were used to film overhead shots. I suppose people have always like aerial footage, so the use of drones is not such a surprise.
Well, she also knows how I have always dreamed of putting cameras in my radio controlled planes. I never got around to doing it (college and life got in the way), so she has decided to fulfill my dreams by buying me a drone.
As shown in Figure 4, Toni and Jett bought me a birthday present this week. This drone will take me back to my childhood and will allow me to finally make pictures and movies from the sky. I hope that someday soon, articles will appear in this blog showing the results of my life-long obsession.
Figure 4 – My birthday presents from Toni and Jett. Now I’ve got to learn how to fly a drone!
A Green Shirt To Commemorate Earth Day
Today I drove for about 7 hours to give a 30-minute presentation to a group of 100+ Tableau enthusiasts at the Atlanta Tableau User’s Group. It was held at the Delta Airlines Museum.
Since it was Earth Day, I awoke and planned to wear my new green shirt for this event. Unfortunately, I found one of those pesky security tags on the shirt (Figure 5). Based on previous experience, I knew that these are very hard to remove and it was too early for me to take it back to the store to have the tag removed.
Figure 5 – The next time you find a security lock on your clothes, try opening it with a strong magnet. It worked for me, but then again, I was using rare earth magnets that are very strong!
Fortunately, I remembered my rare-earth magnets and thought that I would do a test. Figure 5 shows that the strong magnets unlatched the security tag, just like I thought they would. You can thank me later for that little insight!
More Airplanes From Today
One of the benefits of this presentation was that it was held in the Delta Airline museum. I have included a series of museum pictures for you to enjoy.
National Museum of Naval Aviation
Shortly before the great singer/songwriter, John Denver died in an experimental aircraft accident in 1997, I literally ran into him as he was leaving and I was entering a door at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Although I didn’t get any pictures that day, I have fond memories of that tour through the museum.
Instead of pictures from that site, I offer pictures from 2001 from the National Museum of Naval Aviation. The best radio controlled airplane I ever built was a Navy T34 trainer. The story of that plane will have to be told at a different time. I now offer some great pictures from the museum. Be sure to click through the slideshow to see these awesome aircraft.
Thanks to Andy Piper
I wanted to thank Andy Piper for inviting me to give the presentation and for giving me with a very nice Atlanta Tableau User’s Group (ATUG) shirt. We are United by Data and by Tableau.
Thanks for reading!
