Flights of Four

[4wd]

One from this morning.

[jackladd]

See the bloke on the road, at 3:20-3:30'ish wondering what the thing in the sky is!

Great vid 4wd.
How do you work out what it can see? Do you have a screen on your controls?

[4wd]

Yes you can see what the camera sees on a smartphone screen, it also shows other stuff like direction it's pointing and whether recording or not.
It's hard to see properly when it's bright though.

[wr]

Here's your next challenge 4wd. This chap flies around our area regularly.



Here's one he did 12 months ago over the iron age fort above our place

[4wd]

Those paragliders do seem rather fun, you often see them buzzing over here and it's surprising how far they go in one trip.
The unpowered ones fly huge distances if they get thermals, I remember one landing in a field here and he had come from Carlton Bank about ten miles west of here.

Here's two from late yesterday.
There are so few days up there not foggy or windy I made a special effort.

[wr]

What are the histories of Fat Betty and Ralph's cross?

[4wd]

A way to the south of Fat Betty is Rosedale Abbey, there is no significant remains of it left but it was once quite important and had land stretching up to the watershed marked by that white 'cross' which has a sort of face on the circular stone.
Ralphs Cross is a more typical waymarker stone.
Even today the moors are often foggy and dis-orientating, so features at intervals to reassure travellers they have not lost the way are useful.

The present quite tall cross is relatively recent and is sometimes called Young Ralph.
The original track was about 200 yards west of the modern road - a smaller ancient cross is still there.
There's a tradition to place coins on the arms and a small indentation on the very top.
If you check and find a coin you could take it, if there is not one there you should put one on.
Since it's at least 8 feet tall this is not easy to do!

Recently people have started leaving 'in memoriam' flowers and cards there.
To be honest I don't really approve because they soon get tatty and blow all over the place.
The bouquets often have plastic and wire inside.
They even tip out ashes round about which is a bit gruesome in a place where families often stop.

[4wd]

Flying instead of baling

[wr]

At 55 seconds is a dead giveaway that it's not an organic farm (unless lime had been spread at turnout)
A chap near here took the organic conversion payments for three years but was clever enough to spread his fert by moonlight and his family measuring about 10 meters up the field every pass and standing with a laser pen shining as a guide.
Just goes to show how much info can be obtained from "up there".

[4wd]

Yes I was surprised by those tracks being visible - more than a month after spot weeding docks with the quad.

[4wd]

Not so much a flight as quick...erm... slow spin.
This is surprisingly tricky to do smoothly, as the controls are rather sensitive.
This at about 400 feet altitude though it does not really look it.

[rgsp]

Go on: tell us how many practice runs you had before keeping that one!

Having flown RC model gliders myself, I can appreciate the problem.

Having also flown full sized helicopters a bit, hovering in one spot and slowly rotating is one of the easier manoeuvres, but that relies on have a nice big Naval helicopter which you actually normally fly via the automatic pilot rather than directly.

One of the nicer things is to be able to press the "Hover" button, at which the giant egg-whisk screeches to a standstill, and you can sit in the cockpit, open the windows and have a cup of coffee, while it happily chunters away to itself.

[4wd]

Last of the hay - neighbours field baled on Friday.

[4wd]

[4wd]

Late yesterday, quite pleased with this one.