SuperDave's BLOG

Congratulations! Inga Completes the (2012) Los Angeles Marathon!

SuperDave — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:59:15 +0000

Inga completed the Los Angeles Marathon with a time of 5:25:02 besting her previous time by 1 minute and 24 seconds (for the Santa Clarita Marathon back in 2009). I think this was pretty good since she’s been struggling with blisters during the last month of her training.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be there to take photos but I’ll post her official marathon photos later (if any are available). Due to the cold she was wearing a jacket over her bib so they may not be able to identify her in the photos, but I sure hope they do!

Again, congratulations, great job!

-SuperDave

Inga Finished Her First Marathon!

SuperDave — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:33:37 +0000

My wife, Inga Johnston, (bib #200) ran (and finished) the Santa Clarita marathon on Sunday November 8th 2009. This was her first marathon and her time was 5:26:26. Unfortunately, I completely FAILED as a camera man and pressed the wrong button and didn’t film her crossing the finishing line. Oh well, I guess she’ll have to run another one in order to give me a second chance to get it right. Is that OK honey? I hear the LA marathon is coming up in a few months. Do you feel up to it?

Anyway, here’s some photos I did get…

Congratulations! I’m so proud of you! Keep it up.

-SuperDave

It’s a boy! (Actually, it’s a Volvo.)

SuperDave — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:37:56 +0000

Welcome this new addition to our family! Nope, not a kid, but another car. We’ve just purchased a 2004 Volvo XC90 “Cross Country”. Here are some photos…

The funny thing is that this is a replacement for Inga’s Saab that got crashed back in March, but it will be MY new car. We’re planning to sell the Ford Focus soon. Then Inga’s thinking about getting another Saab for herself later.

-SuperDave

Inga’s Saab is dead!

SuperDave — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:06:24 +0000

Wednesday afternoon (3/18/2009) while on the way to the Valley Thrift Store to find some great bargains someone ran a red light and nailed Inga’s Saab. He hit her in the front left fender as she was turning left coming off of the 5 freeway South onto Lankershim Blvd. It spun her around and she hit her head on the door and threw her neck out of whack. At least she was able to walk away but the car suspension is completely destroyed and is pretty much a goner (not worth fixing). Good bye old friend.

We’re not sure about the other drivers injuries as he could not speak English but he also walked away and there was no obvious injuries or bleeding.

Inga’s got a chiropractors appointment on Thursday.

Here’s some photos Inga took with her phone…

-SuperDave

We survived the fires. Thank God!

SuperDave — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:36:12 +0000

Marek Fire 10/13/2008

We survived the Little Tujunga and the Marek fires (on Oct 12th and 13th of 2008 respectively)! See some of the photos in our Gallery. More photos and video to come once we get “back to normal” again. Here’s a panoramic photo of the view from our back yard “afterward”.

Thanks to everyone who was praying for us and the safety of our house and for offering to put us up while we were evacuated.

UPDATE #1: I finally got one of the videos edited and uploaded. This was the day before the big (Marek) fire. As soon as I get the Marek fire video done I’ll make another update.

Little Tujunga Fire – Aerial Assault Highlights from David Johnston on Vimeo.

UPDATE #2: Here is the long anticipated Marek fire video. Lots of water dropping action here!

Marek Fire in Slymar CA from David Johnston on Vimeo.

Click here to download iPod format version of video!

-SuperDave

Inga’s Terrific Guacamole Dip Recipe

SuperDave — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:31:51 +0000

Ingredients;

4 ripe avocados – mashed
2 ripe tomatoes – diced
¼ onion – diced
1 ½ limes – juiced
¼ cup cilantro – chopped
½ tsp garlic powder
1 ½ tsp sugar
¾ tsp salt

Instructions;

Chop, dice, mash and all add all ingredients in a bowl and serve with chips.

Enjoy!

-SuperDave

Check This Out!

SuperDave — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 03:52:04 +0000

I’ve made some changes to my web page, finally! It’s been unmodified for many years now and I think it’s quite stale. So I’ve updated my blog, made it my home page and I’ve even added a new feature . It’s a new section called “Check This Out!” You can access by clicking on that tab at the top of the page. I’ll put interesting things in there periodically that I think you should check out (of course). I hope you find it interesting.

-SuperDave

Air Show Day with Dad (X2)

SuperDave — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:54:04 +0000

Today I took my dad to “Rockin AirFest 2006” AKA “The Van Nuys Air Show” and the “Giant Scale Squadron Fly-In” at the Apollo XI RC flying field. The weather was great; not too hot and not too cold. We saw everything that was cool and took lots of photos. At the “AirFest” there wasn’t much happening in the air while we were there but they did have some cool plans and helicopters on the tarmac that we could swarm. At the “Fly-In” the coolest things where the scale jets with REAL turbine engines! Wow, where they fast! The smell and sounds where awesome too! We overheard the owner of the A-10 “Warthog” saying that is cost over $38,000! Now that’s an expensive hobby. Aside from the turbines being a little smaller than the engine cowlings you’d never be able to tell that it wasn’t the real thing, the detail was incredible! Check it out. Click on the images below to visit my Gallery site to view the photos.

-SuperDave

My Hummingbird V2 (Fixed Pitch) Helicopter

SuperDave — Wed, 31 May 2006 03:54:16 +0000

I’ve just uploaded some photos of my first electric micro helicopter – the Hummingbird V2 (Fixed Pitch). These are some of the first photos that I took after flying it for the first time. Since then I’ve made a few upgrades. More on that later. This is a GREAT helicopter for beginners! It’s very inexpensive, resilient and easy/cheap to repair. It can’t handle any wind, but if you’ve got a big enough room you can fly it in the house or garage – any time!

Follow this link to view the FULL SIZE PHOTOS in my Gallery. Here are some of the thumbnails…

-SuperDave

Will my X-Cell .40 ever fly again?

SuperDave — Tue, 30 May 2006 06:15:09 +0000

Today was an interesting day. I decided to try to get my X-Cell .40 (vintage 1985?) flight worthy again. It’s so old it had (what we call now) a wide-band receiver. Around 1997 RC radios went to narrow-band which is the system we all use now. A while ago I bought a new Hitec Eclipse 7 transmitter, a new Hitec 8 channel receiver and Futaba GY401 AVCS gyro. I installed them but never got the radio fully programmed to use them. Also, it hasn’t been flown in 8+ years so I’m not even sure if the engine will turn over! So today I decided to try to see how much work it would take to get it flight ready.

First of all, the container of fuel that I had was (I’m sure) useless. If you leave it too long the nitro escapes through the plastic and won’t run the engine. I’ve had this happen before so I know what I’m talking about. So I replaced the fuel container with a newer one. I don’t know how new it really is, but it was never opened so I’m sure it’s got a much better chance of running the engine than the original container would have. Of course in the process I learned that the old container had leaked (some how) all over the inside of my flight box. What a mess that was to clean out! I’m so tired of nitro engines!!! This is why I moved to electrics. I’d rather wait for the batteries to charge and deal with all of the nitro mess!

After getting the fuel situation all sorted out I started on the radio setup. I disabled the collective channel so I would adjust the throttle without the helicopter trying to take off of my test stand. I got my flight box battery fully charged, tested my starter motor and glow plug starter. So far – so good. But my luck was about to change – significantly. I had just filled the gas tank about 3/4 full. When I removed the filler tube all of the gas just shot right out all over the grass! What was that all about?!?! The tank shouldn’t be pressurized until the engine is running! Something was wrong. Perhaps the muffler line was clogged. So I disconnected it and filled the tank again. This time the gas stayed in. I reconnected the muffler line. I turned everything on, connected the glow plug starter, set the throttle and started to turn the engine over. Nothing. I adjusted the throttle. Still nothing. I pumped some gas directly into the carburetor. I removed the glow plug so I could crank the engine to get the fuel flowing. That seemed to work so I replaced the glow plug and tried to start it again. Miraculously it started! For some reason it revved and slowed over and over again. I’m not sure what that was all about. The throttle servo (and others) seemed to be going crazy; oscillating back and forth. I don’t know why. Without the engine running the electronics seemed to be working properly. I tried several times to get the engine running and stable, but couldn’t. When the electronics wasn’t oscillating wildly the engine seemed to be having real problems. I finally had to pull the fuel line to shut it down. I had been holding the rotor head to keep it from spinning and may have burned out the clutch in the process. Bummer! It was smoking by the time I got the engine stopped! What a mess! I’m not sure if this thing will ever fly again. I’ve been so spoiled with electric copters I don’t know if I could ever go back to nitro. But since this copter has to be so much more stable than my Hummingbird V2 (Fixed Pitch) copter I would love to fly it just one more time to see how much better it handles. Since this was my first RC chopper and I’ve invested so much in it I kind of hate to just walk away from it. The last time I flew it I still had the training gear on it. I did pretty well at hovering at any altitude (up to 50 feet) but I had to keep the tail pointed at me to maintain orientation. Since then I’ve been using several computer simulators to improve my skills. I’ve been using a R/C AeroChopper (DOS program with wire frame graphics) for many many years. The graphics aren’t great, but it’s a pretty good simulator. I’ve become quite a “hot shot” on that simulator. Lately I’ve upgraded to a Real Flight G3, which has awesome graphics including several photo realistic flying fields. My personal favorite is the “sod farm“. It takes a good bit of skill and experience to take off, turn around and run straight into the van parked behind me. So far I can only hit it (directly) 2 out of 10 times. I guess I still need more practice. Anyway, I’ve been flying my FP Hummingbird (in the house) for quite a while now and I’m getting pretty good at keeping it in one place (reasonably under control). I’ve even flown it at work, check out the video on the DreamHost blog! On the Real Flight G3 I’m flying the Bell 222 (modified so the retractable landing gear works) and can keep it reasonably under control. I’m getting pretty good at nose-in flying and disaster recovery. That’s why I thought if I could get the X-Cell airborne again I could probably do pretty well with it because it’s got plenty of power to handle a bit of wind and it reacts very well too. Oh well, we’ll see if that ever happens.

At this point I’m not really sure I want to go to all the trouble to get his nitro chopper back in the air. It’s reinforced my distain for nitro and will probably get me to start work right away on getting my new T-REX airborne.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. I sold my (un-built) Hummingbird V3 (Collective Pitch) chopper with all the upgrades to a colleague of mine and purchased an Align T-REX SE. So far I’ve got the electronics all set up and tested. Now I’ve got to start working on the airframe. More updates on that later.

Here is a link to the FULL SIZE PHOTOS of my X-Cell .40 chopper on my Gallery site. Here are the thumbnails…

-SuperDave