Bill Fortney is BACK and BETTER than Ever!

My friend, and professional photographer, Bill Fortney is back in action with another exciting adventure this year and a personal website that is gorgeous.

He is presently involved with America From 500 feet "Part II", this time utilizing the Predator powered parachute. Link

His personal website is typical Bill, only the best! Outlines his career, family, and some of his best work, including the original America From 500 Feet project done with an AC Fun Racer. Link

Definitely worth your while to check out both sites!

Profile Pictures... I've got your free icon pictures here!

Hi Gang.

Most of you have been pretty good with figuring out all the interesting features on the new Trikepilot Social, and that's what I was hoping for when we launched.

One item is still stuck under my fingernail, however, and that is the large number of "blank" Member Profile Pictures.

I know many of you are shy, or don't have a good idea how to get your images up there, so I'm going to help. The bottom line is that I would love to have "zero" blank profiles.

So how can I help? I'm donating some images for you guys to use.

Simply go to my public Flickr Account here: which shows a bunch of great shots from my recent adventure to Trikefest 2007.

When you see an image you like, simply right click on the "icon" image from the front page and choose "Save As" or "Save to Disk", then store it on a memorable location on your hard drive. Don't bother with the full-size image, you only need a minimum of 118px x 118px, which is fine with the Flickr thumbnail shown.

Then, go into the upper right corner of your "My Page" tab and choose "Edit My Profile".

From there, you will be able to click on the left upper side where it says "Change Your Profile Photo".



After a quick password check, you will be on the page that lets you upload that image you just saved on your hard disk.

Hit the "Browse" button, locate the file, then you can select the image you download, hit "upload" or "open" (depending on browser), and you are all set. The program will ask you to verify that you like what you have done and you are ready to go from Nameless and Faceless to super cool.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS... just do like my good friend Damien

How to Bulk-Upload Images to Trikepilot Social from Flickr

At present, the photo upload function in Trikepilot Social is manual upload only. There "is", however, a great alternative... using Flickr.com

Here's a step by step:

First, go into the Photos Tab at Trikepilot Social. Then click on "My Photos". You can add photos manually (as you've been doing), by your email or cell phone one at a time (fun, but not what you want now), or by using a free Flickr account. On the lower right you see the link.



Next you will need to set up a Free Flickr.com account like the one I have at this location:
You need to decide whether to make the images public or private, but EITHER would be fine for us on our site because you are going to use Flickr simply as a place to upload your images in bulk, and then trikepilot will 'slurp' the images from that site automatically...saving you tons of time.

Flickr has built in manual file management, but on windows and mac there are free 'BULK' upload tools that you can use. See this link: Pick the bulk uploader tool for your operating system and then set it up with your Flickr account name (it's all automatic) and then you are ready to go.

Once you've set up your Flickr account and bulk uploaded, then you have a "repository" for slurping the photos over to Trikepilot Social. You can also create a cool RSS Feed from your Flickr page that will let you very easily share your images from Flickr to Trikepilot Social in your member page or in a blog post without reposting them on our site. The only downside of this is that you don't then have them archived with your member site and they don't get action on our search engine or favorite's ordering, etc. So it's best to take the next step below.

So, this is the page you come to on Trikepilot Social where you can now 'slurp' your Flickr photos. You can select any number of ways to get the photos, by last number of images, by photo set, by tag name, by all photos, by description, etc. Whatever works, it only takes time and space, but it is all automatic.



Once you have done that, you will see a page like this below, showing your recently uploaded photos. Now you can organize, edit, rename, do whatever you want at Trikepilot Social.



Last Trick:

If you want to put images from an RSS Feed from your Flickr account into Trikepilot Social:

Go into the lower left corner of your Flickr home page and you will see an orange RSS Feed icon with the words "FEED". If you click on that, you can generate the URL link to your image feed and either copy and paste that code into Trikepilot Social as I will show, or email it to someone or use it to view your images on any browser without logging in to Flickr.



My feed looks like this:

Now, the last thing would be to go to Trikepilot Social and in the lower left corner of your member page, you will see "RSS". Click on Edit, then "paste" the feed URL like the one I show above, into the URL line. You can use my to test, but obviously you want your own photos! ;)



When you are done, you should see something like this:



NOW, you will have an automatic feed of your Flickr images on your personal page at Trikepilot Social!

Keep in mind, however, that the feed photos will NOT get ranked in the Trikepilot Social Photos section for popularity or times viewed or search by terms. Sometimes that's fine... so your choice!

Let me know if you have any questions

Ultimate Ears - Budget Alternative for Headset Free Flying?

I will be shortly doing an update on my original "how to" article about the Nolan N40/Lynx Headset modification project (Original Article Link). Part of the reason is that one of the components required to make the project possible was the studio transducers (ear pieces).

In my case, I have severe tinnitus (ringing in my ears and mid-range hearing loss), so I went to an audio specialist and obtained the professional-level earpieces and transducers.

About a year ago, which was five years after my original pair, the wiring came undone and I was without protectors during the repair time. My doctor, Michael Santucci at Sensaphonics suggested that I have a "backup" pair made with some Koss earbuds. The cost of this was much less than the original, because the transducers from Koss were much less expensive. All together, with the custom ear molds, I think I spent about $250.00 vs. the original $899.00 or so of my "professional" level set.

After using the new set, I actually prefer it to the original, mainly because the earpieces do not fill my entire ear canal and thus are a little less uncomfortable on long flights. I cannot confirm the db reduction is the same, but I'm told that it is comparable. Please NOTE that you really SHOULD replace the standard silicone ear bud on the transducer with a CUSTOM moulded unit in order to obtain the full 25 noise-reduction required to protect your hearing. The standard earbud is claimed to provide a 16db reduction.

A custom moulded unit can be done by an audiologist for a relatively small fee or you can order it done via the internet from various companies. I've also seen booths at Oshkosh and Sun-N-Fun where they will do it on the spot for $25.00. Search Google for "industrial hearing protection ear molds"

You can find out more about these lower-cost options at Ultimateears.com or Sensaphonics.com

Low Flying Record Smashed!

Since we're on the theme of what "not" to do... another classic. Please don't bother the crocodiles.....! Pretty sure that is Australia.

Jump right to the good stuff at 1:33 into the video

Flight of the Trike - Flight Simulator Video

An interesting look at a Virtual Reality flight video of a trike. I believe it was done in Microsoft's new "X" Flight Simulator. Ahhhh.... can you really perform these maneuvers in real life? Mmmm... see my previous post.

Please Do NOT Try This At Home!

A rather well-known video of an attempted loop of a trike at an airshow in Europe many years ago. I was told by a source that the pilot actually might have survived the impact, but for the fact that he was not wearing a helmet at the time and his head was split open by the front strut.

Moral of the story? Trikes do not have tails. Do not exceed 45 degrees of pitch, especially without a helmet or BRS....

2007 RocketBelt Convention - All Trikers Need Apply!

Well, it's that time again folks. Get your jet packs dusted-off and head to the 2007 Rocket Belt Convention!

Link:

Spread the word about Trikepilot.com Social Edition!

First of all, thanks to all my fellow triker pals who have taken the time this week to log in and upload your goodies. I think we are off to a good start already.



Several of you have been asking me about how to accomplish certain things in this site, and we've been working together to learn and try new features.






My favorites thusfar are as follows:





1) Tony Castillo gets the A++ for his terrific bio and Wonderful images Tony. Most of all, however, you reminded all of us that we are "sorely" in need of some female eye-candy in this sport. Can you PUHLEAAASE load some more images from that promotional photo shoot? ;) I think I speak for the group here...








2) Miklos Zsolnay for your sheer volume of cool vids and stories and photos. Your contributions are greatly appreciated;







3) John Keith figured out how to do that HTML linking in his blog so that he could put up his own link favorites, and references to his own sites. Nice job on that John, I like the way you worked it through;





4) Rob Caya, thanks for picking up the slack on the news of our wonderful aventure down to Shawnee and beyond. I can't wait to hear your updates on the training adventures in the new 912, and see how quickly we can be up there working on our formation flying!!



5) John Cortesy, thanks for your "what I learned about flying" blog entry and your posting of your videos from Alex Gore's "Winds and Wings" site. I've tried to contact Alex several times to get him on board, but perhaps he's at Oshkosh? I love those vids and would welcome them here direct from the source. Your trike colors are also very cool ;)




As I'm thinking about what to include, I think it best to throw open the door to everyone and ask for your input on what things you are trying to figure out in the site, what you like so far, and what we should add or change?

On a personal note, I'm working on some of the layout issues, the advertising space (such as whether I should include Ebay auctions relating to Aviation gear like GPS's???), and the photo displays.



Did you know that you can upload your images for free to Flickr with the bulk uploader (easier than doing it one at a time) and then keep those files private at Flickr, but "slurp" the ones that you want over to this site automatically? It's true! The advantage is that you can bulk upload as many as 100MB of photos to Flickr very very fast, then use that as a launching pad for sharing your photos here or elsewhere without having to email or compress or anything (since Flickr supports multiple sizing automatically). There is an option in your photo upload menu here that asks if you want to integrate your photos from Flickr. The initial setup is a tiny bit of work, but once it is done, the rest is sooo much faster and easier. Check it out here:



Did you also know that you can embed widgets or videos from other sites into your page with one click? This means that you can take any favorite video or embed code or widget and "paste" it into either your video section, photo section, or your special "text box" at the top of your personal page (like for a weather widget or similar).



Likewise, in the lower left corner of your page you have an RSS feeder. This means you can automatically display any RSS data from any other website page or feed, this includes advertising, photos, videos, blogs, whatever.... very very handy and you can get creative here by putting your own advertising feed into your page if you want to try to generate a bit of revenue yourself.



Lastly, did you know that any photos or videos you post at this site will ALWAYS be watermarked and link back to your page no matter who "shares" them? This is different than YouTube or metacafe, where your videos or photos are forever "lost" when shared, because the links only go back to the main sites of YouTube or metacafe, not your own source site.





Find more photos like this on Trikepilot - Social Edition




To conclude this post, I'm asking all of you to take advantage of the viral tools on this site, including the badge widget at the bottom right of every page. With this you can send a "postcard" so to speak to all your triking fans or friends. They too can then join on automatically. This or sending an invite on the email function (at the top left) will let us get the word out quickly and get as many people to join as possible.





The original Trikepilot.com site has more than 6000 unique visitors every month from more than eighty countries around the world (I'm amazed when I check my Google Analytics every day at the remote locations that log on! ... Borneo?, Rangoon?, Tibet?) My personal goal is to get every one of those viewers to join on to this social site if possible, even if they only lurk. I'm thinking of opening up some form of tracking or contest to see who can get the most people to subscribe (a little multi-level marketing??).
What do you think?



Safe Flying!

Spence

Bivouac to Cushing Field and Oshkosh

Wow, what a week. After being virtually "grounded" for months, I managed to put on more than fifteen hours of flying in a period of four days!

The adventure began last Friday morning. I picked up my friend Rob Caya in Chicago and we drove east towards my flying farm in SW Michigan, about eighty miles away. Rob is working on obtaining his Sport Pilot's license, and is going to soon be a Quantum 912 owner. He is a natural-born pilot, so we've had a great time together putting on some dual hours in my Quik.

Thankfully traffic was light, so we arrived at the field before eleven and packed some light gear into the machine.

We called ahead to Tony Castillo, who was with John Keith and their mutual friend Greg. Tony and John are the USA representatives for P&M Aviation USA and also run their own great site at Trikeflyers. Tony, John and Greg had been flying up towards Cushing Field in Newark, IL, when I called, so I asked them to detour over to Shawnee Field in Bloomfield, IN instead. Shawnee is at 1I3 here

Rob and I took off into warm and clear skies, with just a few puffy clouds in either direction. Our course was due South, and we had tailwinds from the N/NE at upwards of 20mph. This gave us a hands-off ground speed of around 95 to 105 mph in the Quik. We started out flying at 2500 agl, but found that we were getting a tiny bit of chop from the temperature inversion layer. When we climbed up to 4500 the air smoothed out nicely, though we were a touch on the cold side for what we were wearing.


I handed the bar over to Rob so that he could get a little back-seat bar time, and he seem to enjoy the opportunity. In the meantime, I played around a bit with getting my iPhone (yes, I'm a gadget freak) to work pumping music into the Lynx intercom system.


We eventually made our way down to Shawnee Field (1I3) where we were met with the site of three gorgeous new P&M Quik microlights on the ground. A phone call to Allistair Wilson and fifteen minutes later we were eating lunch with the gang of flyers in Spencer, IN, about five minutes from the field.

Lunch was short and tasty, but we needed to get Rob back to the airport so he could check-out Allistair's Quantum 912 that was for sale. I left those two for a bit and took a ride into town for some gas. When I returned, Rob was in the circuit making touch-and-goes with Allistair. It looked as if the deal was sealed and Rob was going to be the proud owner of a new 912!



We gathered the gang together and made a brief plan for some formation flying on the way back to the Chicago area.
Time was short and we didn't get off the ground until after 5:30pm EST, which meant that we had very little room for error on the return if we were going to get on the ground before dark. To our dismay, the tailwinds we enjoyed on the way down were still there...only now they were tailwinds, and still clipping along at 25mph plus!

On the way back we did an airshow formation takeoff, with the requisite lap around the pattern for good luck. We then proceeded due north in a missing-man "V" with Tony brining up the rear for photographs and video. Our chosen altitude was 1500 agl, but then we dropped down on the deck for some terrain mapping action. Greg and John slipped back and Tony took the lead with me on his high 4 o'clock, in the "Flying Freedom" video angle setup. I was able to get some decent video and stills of him from various angles and directions while he grazed the tree-tops at 100mph plus.
The thing that was unusual to me is that I had done the same type of flying with Rob Rollison back in 2000 on the White River, but we were flying at 40 to 50 mph back then. Now, Tony and I were doing more than twice that speed, and not at Sunset, so the bumps were still there. It was quite a challenge to keep my shot aligned for Rob on video and me on stills while I trailed Tony making his maneuvers below.

The result of our work seems pretty nice, however, and I'll be featuring that media here shortly. Here's a quick preview:

Around Eight Thirty we had made it to within thirty miles of my home airport in Sawyer Michigan. We were still fighting the winds, however, and everyone needed gas. At that time we decided it prudent to drop in to fill our gas tanks, and drain our other tanks.

More to come...