This is my edited production of my trip to Northam last Wednesday to see the lift off of the Australian Hot Air Ballooning Championships 2017.

It was a perfect day, a clear, cloudless blue sky with no wind at the surface, although obviously there was wind above from the east.

I went with my friend Geoff Williams in his lovely BMW M335i. We had a little trouble finding the launch paddock, and were assisted by a gorgeous Scandinavian young lady (long white hair) who was driving in front of us. At one point she stopped as she realised we were following her and walked back to talk. She saw two options, forward or back, and we agreed to press on forward. We both arrived just in time.

I was shooting with my OSMO gimbal camera and my Panasonic FZ1000, both in 4K resolution. I had one in each hand! Crazy, but there was no time for a tripod and it was shoot or lose the opportunity. It worked. The Pana was in my right hand and I had to operate it with one finger, but it worked.

The OSMO let me down again as the software app on my mobile phone which is used to control the camera and see the vision (ie the viewfinder) crashed every time. So I shot the whole thing just aligning the lens by eye. It’s a 20mm equivalent, very wide, so it worked OK. I shot about 9 mins continuous, just sort of waving it around very slowly.

It’s taken a lot to edit it and upload but here it is.

More pics:

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My iiNet wifi modem has been crashing for hours at a time, but it’s up now and on-line. I have made a serious complaint to Support and they’re sending a replacement modem for me to test next week. It will take 3-5 working days! For a 45 minute distance from Subiaco to here. Pathetic.

I’m also getting serious drops in speed i.e. congestion at peak times, down to as low as 2Mb/s, when I’m paying for 25Mb/s. Not happy, Sam. I’m going to ask for a rebate of my billing as they can see when I’m on-line or not.

I also object to having to diagnose my own problems and swap modems myself. I’m the customer. Why should I have to do it. I also know that configuring the replacement modem will be a pain. It’s not simple.

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I’ve had a nice comment on one of my posts from December last year. I wrote about a phone call I’d had from a friend called Graham Baptie from my Trigg dog walking days.

Well, his sister has seen the post and commented that she hasn’t seen her older brother in 25 years. How about that? It was a very nice comment, thanking me. I’ve emailed her back asking if she wants me to put her in touch. Uh oh, I thought I had his phone number, but now I can’t find it. I may not be able to deliver on that one. I don’t know where she is. Graham is Scottish. Maybe she’s in Scotland?