Converts

    This morning dawned beautiful and also promised a warm day, so I was pretty excited about flying prospects. I figured that south of town looking north would give me the best light, so I went to Barney Jordan Landing. (Yes, I did take off from a landing. Quit interrupting.) That's quite nearby, much the nearest access to the river, but surrounded by warehouses, stadium parking facilities and quarries and quarry traffic. So the river is pretty but nothing nearby is very. It was crazy cool flying and I learned something important. If Toy REALLY loses signal, it flies back home by itself. Then I learned something else equally important: if it's about to land in the wrong place (on your car, say), you can interrupt the automatic landing process to move it somewhere safer and then it will continue to land itself. Two good things.
    The place I really wanted to go was West Columbia Riverwalk, because it's adjacent to the Gervais Street bridge, much the prettiest of the spans over the Congaree. I took some insane video basically chasing a car over the bridge (from 100 feet in the air, of course). Toy is pretty fast! Then when I figured I'd gone far enough, I told it to come home, and found that Toy had fans. A couple were very, very, very interested, and the gentleman was particularly keen to get his own. I showed them the video and then demonstrated a hover and how high Toy could go and then flew it off for some more keen video. I also took a series of pictures that formed a beautiful complete 360 panorama. (More in a second.) They thanked me enthusiastically and I went off home to review my haul.
    The 360 could not be turned into a panorama using my software. Half of it turned out OK, although I had to do some manipulation. The automatic stitching software lost Uptown Columbia somehow. It'll be funny when I go out to buy a new laptop just to be able to make better panoramas. The one from Barney Jordan Landing was cooler, to be honest, if a little industrial. Suffice it to say that the day was big fun and I hardly feel guilty about still not signing up for Obamacare. Was guiltily proud of coining Fauxbamacare for an outfit that charges you $20 per month to certify that you're insured for purposes of beating the penalty. Didn't sign up for that either, though. Tick tick tick.