Breaking News! Missing Aircraft Located!

David Jrrafael

Los Angeles, CA—On January 25, 2014 on a flight somewhere over the West Side of the City of Angels my Blade 350 quadcopter vanished!  I was piloting this aircraft and suddenly was blinded by the sun and never saw it again!  

The good news this aircraft was my video camera armed Spydrone and it’s unmanned!  Had this been a traditional aircraft I’d have gone missing with it just like Amelia Earhart.

If there could be good news here it's simply that a "catastrophic event" with my little quadcopter would cause less damage than a thrown soccer ball on impact with anything or anyone. 

Today is April 11, 2014, nearly three months later and I was convinced I’d never see it again.  I lost the visual of the drone near the 405 Freeway and Wilshire.   Considering the drone’s GoPro Hero 3+ camera and its 64 gig memory card together cost over $450.00 and the device itself cost around $650.00 I was in pain. 

Today I was checking responses from my blog posts and someone claimed to have found my drone.  Of course I knew one of my pals was playing a mean prank on me and this could not be for real.  

The comment however described my drone right down to a small piece of duct tape on one of the landing struts. The posted comment also had a telephone number.  I called the number and the voice on the other end sounded sincere.  I was skeptical to say the least. 

It was a young man who claimed to have found the drone on a rooftop in Westwood.  I quickly offered him a $200.00 cash reward and that seemed to please him.  I hustled over to the area where he was employed and he recognized me from my posted blog pictures. 

The fellow it turned out was David Jrrafael.  He brought me to a vacant commercial space where he had a small office.  We went in and to my amazement was my missing drone was on top of a filing cabinet.  There was no noticeable damage whatsoever to the drone or camera!

I knew the drone would fly until it ran out of battery and then land gently with a small amount of reserve power.  That’s exactly what it did! 

David is a pretty smart lad and figured he might find a lead to the owner of the drone by doing a Google search.  Using key words like, lost drone and Westwood he found my blog article lamenting this significant loss.  My blog article popped out and David knew that he had found me!

After I rewarded David for his honesty as I had promised I snapped the picture above.  I took the drone to my cave and reviewed the memory card's  video.  I watched my wayward drone slowly return to within 1/8 of a mile from where I launched it.  It landed on the roof of a building housing a popular drug store. 

David was smart enough to search with Google to inquire about the value of my lost property and sell it to the highest bidder.  Instead his moral compass operated perfectly.   

I made a new pal today as well as became reacquainted with my child that ran away.  Today was a great day for me! 

Did I learn a lesson?  In retrospect I now will place a name, phone number and e-mail address just in case something like this ever happens again. 

Details of the flight path:  I was on a parking garage roof in the 1000 block of Broxton.  I sent my drone due South and then West. 

It was approximately a good half mile away when it got between me and the sun.  That's where I was blinded and lost visual contact.  I hit the retune home control but when I could not see it I released that lever.  I looked and looked and could not see it.

It became obvious that it was around the 405 Freeway and Wilshire Blvd.  I assumed it was there or even further West. Well beyond 1/2 mile from me. 

The recovered video from the GoPro told the real story.  The drone came back but at a very high altitude that made it difficult to see.  The camera stayed pointed in the same Western direction as it came back toward me.  

What happened was I had let go of the controls and at that point the drone was approximately 300 feet East of where I was standing!  It had to pass right over my head!  

The drone was a a very high altitude and it hovered overhead until the battery drained and then it gently landed on the roof of the CVS Pharmacy on Westwood Blvd and Weyburne Ave.  I kept my eyes glued to the area where I'd last seen it.  

The video camera was facing in the wrong direction as the drone was going backwards.  At some point thereafter David was on the CVS Pharmacy roof and found it.  

Here is the video from the ill-fated flight:

     

Kathleen, You’re Already Gone and We Hardly Knew Ya!

Washington, DC—Kathleen Sebelius, the Director of Health and Human Services is now in route to the failed Government Bureaucrat Cemetery.  She was given an impossible mission to be the skipper of a ship that was doomed before it began.   She was at the epicenter of the largest financial fraud in human history.   

Obamacare is nothing more than a vast criminal conspiracy between a bunch of corrupt Marxists pals of Barack Obama that met secretly behind closed doors.  There was nothing transparent about it and few if any members of Congress ever attempted to read the monster before they voted for it.

The cost was in the trillions of dollars. The real crime is that it’s lived up to none of Obama’s hype and deceitful promises.  Millions that were adequately insured, lost the policies they had and were forced to pay more for something they did not need or want.

Obamacare has loads of time bombs and land mines that seem to be exploding every day.   One unexpected surprise was the millions of inmates in various state prisons.  They had in place state run healthcare for these felons.  Now state correctional health systems are dismantling because they are enrolling their prisoners in Obamacare.  That new burden alone has incredibly massive cost implications for the entire program.

Promotion for Obamacare and the related Internet Armageddon website has cost billions more. 

They claim Seven million Obamacare signups before the so-called deadline.  That’s really insignificant when we all know there are 300,000,000 Americans.  How’s that in anyway considered more than a massive failure?

Imagine if instead of wasting all that money they reversed the last 50 years of massive tax increases to employers for keeping people employed?  Everyone would be employed and be covered by traditional insurance.  There would be millions of new taxpayers in the process. 

Kathleen, you’re now a marked pariah for eternity.  As Obamacare implodes and our nation suffers as a result you will forever be remembered as the face of this plague.  

PA High School Mass Slash and Stab Fest Was Enabled and Facilitated by the Political Agenda of School Officials

Murrysville, PA – At least 20-people, mostly students have been slashed and stabbed at the Franklin Regional High School here.  

The bloody scenario played out for a solid five minutes before an unarmed, contract security guard along with a teacher finally overpowered the assailant, 16-year-old Alex Hribal.   Police said Hribal was armed armed with two simple kitchen knives. 

Some of the wounded students suffered very serious injuries.  The security guard was himself cut and stabbed during the bloody horror fest as he fought with Hribal.  

It’s anything but a secret that Gun Free Zones provide absolute protection for armed and determined madmen.  We all know you can’t hope stop violent armed assaults without superior or at least equal weapons in use by the assailant. 

We also know that from time to time these terrible things happen especially in Gun Free Zones.  It is incumbent upon those responsible for safety and security wherever children are gathered to protect them.  They must take reasonable steps to insure events like what happened today at the Franklin Regional High School are stopped cold.

Instead, hysterical and institutional gun hatred ruled and the school refused to retain either armed off-duty cops or armed security officers. 

What they did was to waste taxpayer’s money on an unarmed guard from Capital Asset Protection, Inc.  What the school did was simply to hire one more victim or hostage should anything serious happen.  The website for Capital Asset Protection does not offer security guards that are either trained with or carry firearms. 

This school mini-holocaust should have been stopped within seconds or only a few minutes with minimal bloodshed.  Had they an armed cop, guard or teacher this event may have never happened because the assailant would have been deterred. 

Had the assailant been confronted by someone with training and a gun the violence would have immediately ended with or without shots being fired.  Instead the young maniac slashed and stabbed his way through the school uninterrupted for what must have seemed to be an eternity.   

One serious issue that has been ignored by politicians and the media and that’s the use and abuse of prescribed medication for mental health issues.  In the past those people who could not cope or function in society were committed to mental institutions.  The mental hospitals were emptied and shuttered when these drugs began to replace institutionalization.

Most common firearms were not really regulated until the federal Gun Control Act of 1968.  Before 1968 mass killings or shootings by deranged people were virtually non-existent. It was also after 1968 when our psychiatrists began dispensing modern mind altering "wonder drugs" on their patients.

As for our schools, we’ve surrendered them to radical liberals long ago.  The teacher’s unions have made sure that our population is incredibly ignorant while being totally submissive to tyranny.  We’ve meekly accepted the Zero-Tolerance mentality that our Leftist run schools invented. 

Our children are the future.  They must be rescued from the Bolshevik educators.  That means attending and advocating for your children at school board meetings or home schooling.  Our children’s safety is at stake.   

We all must begin to recognize that guns do save innocent lives. Our children don’t deserve to be put at risk in order to satisfy Leftist political agendas.  

Take a Look at the Latest and Greatest Camera Armed, Unmanned Aircraft Drone!

Las Vegas, NV—The National Association of Broadcasters are meeting in Sin City for among other things learn about the rapidly changing technology that brings breathtaking images to those very spectacular TV screens in most of our homes. 

These days TV news directors everywhere are faced with a financial crisis and thankfully the equipment they need has never been better or cheaper.  The largest single expense for any newsroom is that exciting helicopter assisted newsgathering.  Frankly, many medium and small market TV news organizations have had to eliminate helicopters altogether or enter into video sharing and cost splitting agreements with new competitors because they simply can no longer afford it.

Helicopter safety is no small issue with too many deadly crashes and the related liability issues. Another problem is scrambling to get the helicopters quickly in the air when news breaks. 

Quadcopters armed with small high definition cameras are a really good solution.  These have been around for nearly a couple of years but are just now getting refined and perfected for TV newsgathering 

The cost of the drones can be from $1,000.00 to $15,000.00 depending on the camera payload being supported.  TV stations would be well served to obtain several of these drones that should be kept throughout their coverage area.  The less expensive Camera Drones are perfectly adequate for broadcast quality newsgathering purposes. The larger ones are more suited for feature filmmakers.  

Certain reporters or photographers should be trained in handling these easy to use devices so they can respond quickly to accidents, fires or violent incidents. They can be deployed in mere seconds.

In the Las Vegas or Phoenix metropolitan areas perhaps as many as nine drones in each news department would insure quick aerial response to any situation.  This is only a fraction of the cost of operating a news helicopter. 

The captured video can be accessed through a USB port and quickly edited with industry standard software for news packages. 

The quadcopter camera industry leader DJI, is showing off their latest entry into the Camera Drone Race at the NAB Convention.  They just announced their Phantom 2 Vision Plus drone.  This little gem can capture stunning video.  It comes with a three degree stabilizing gimbal. That improved device holds the camera still in windy conditions or during tricky maneuvering of the drone.  The camera shake or vibration is eliminated in this latest version.  It really excels when panning or moving back and forth. 

The Phantom 2 Vision Plus works with modern smart phones to allow both monitoring of the video but to actually change camera settings like exposure while it’s in the air!  The controller has a built-in wifi extender to give as much as a ½ mile range allowing the pilot to view exactly what the camera is able to capture.

The Phantom uses rechargeable batteries that give it life for over 20 minutes, which would be sufficient for most situations.  I’d recommend a second or even a third back up battery for each drone in your news gathering air force.

There are endless uses for Camera Drones in entertainment or documentary filmmaking.  Private investigators, real estate salespeople, roofers and farmers all have a need for this exciting technology.

The new video drones are lightweight and very safe to operate.  The liability issues are almost non-existent.

I don’t yet own the DJI Phantom II Vision Plus since it just was announced. I do however have experience with the two earlier models that some friends of mine have let me use.  They are terrific to say the least.  I will be getting the newest one as fast as I possibly can.  The price is expected to be less than $1,400 with it’s own camera. 

Here is DJI’s website:

http://www.dji.com/products/everyone   

Here is a great night video with an earlier Phantom model. 

Will Carice van Houten Finely Make the Hollywood “A” List?

Los Angeles, CA— My favorite film of all times is Paul Verhoeven’s, Black Book.  It’s a subtitled German/Dutch film primarily in the Dutch language that’s based on a true story.  The principal protagonist is a sexy Jewish nightclub singer, Rachel Stein that fled the Nazis in Berlin for the Netherlands during the war.  She somehow winds up in the Dutch Resistance for some incredibly dangerous adventures.  It’s also a love story.

The leading lady playing that character is my absolute favorite actress, Carice van Houten who won this role of a lifetime.  The role required acting in different languages, singing and some dancing.  Van Houten was magnificent.  This was Verhoeven’s best film ever and the entire cast and crew were absolutely awesome. 

Van Houten was jaw dropping terrific! There was no emotion she did not absolutely own in this thriller film.  That kind of talent takes years of serious discipline and hard work to develop and master.   

As a result of Black Book and other films Van Houten is a huge celebrity in Europe. She also won a coveted role in HBO’s, Game of Thrones playing Melisandre, The Red Witch.  She’s won five Golden Calf Awards in the Netherlands for her acting.  She also has a great music album on iTunes called, See You On The Ice.  Take a listen and you will like it.  I play it in my car as I drive around L.A.

Getting cast in what I’d call hefty roles in American films has eluded van Houten.  She was recently cast as the Female lead in a Blumehouse production’s low budget horror film, Incarnate.  She plays opposite of actor Aaron Eckhart.  The release date for that project has not yet been announced.  Blumehouse Productions has found serious box office success for their films and I certainly won’t miss this one.

This incredibly talented woman slips into L.A. and New York virtually unnoticed.  She quietly gets off planes taking the shuttle to a car rental agency like the rest of us and goes about her business.  She shops, goes to inexpensive L.A. health clubs to work out with little notice.  

If I have my way van Houten will have a major star’s entourage and bodyguards!  I want to see this woman on the Oscar Award's Red Carpet where she belongs! 

Twice in the last year, van Houten has walked Hollywood’s lesser Red Carpets.  Once for the Third Season Premier of, Game of Thrones.  The last time was at the SAG Awards where Game of Thrones was nominated for an award.  

As van Houten walked the Red Carpet alone and the reporters and photographers are clueless as to just who she is without her character’s huge red wig.   Thankfully my friend Frank Fastner from the German TV network RTL spotted van Houten grabbing her for the only interview (She gave it in the German language) that I’m aware she gave.  At least it was exclusive!

Somebody somehow failed to send an advance publicist on van Houten’s behalf to prepare for the press gauntlet.  This is routinely done for lesser known stars so when they arrive so the media members could ask her the right questions and give them proper face time on the entertainment shows.  Instead of seriously needed interviews van Houten had to settle for a few pictures.

Van Houten is represented by Tracy Brennan at the powerhouse, Creative Artist’s Agency and has a wonderful manager in Amsterdam, Janey van Ierland.   CAA should do better for van Houten before their competition snatches this major talent away from them.

Frankly I’m disappointed that this talented lady is not put up for the kind of roles we see given to Cate Blanchet or Sandra Bullock.  In case you were wondering van Houten’s English is flawless and when she’s acting she masks her accent really well.

I hope that on van Houten’s next trip to L.A. she will find the time to do a video interview with me for my blog.  I want my visitors to love her talent like I do.  More importantly I want every film producer, director and casing director to know that she really rocks! 

If you’ve not seen Black Book, you must!  Here is the trailer:

Traditional Media Can’t Seem To Reinvent Itself For Survival

Newark, New Jersey-- New Jersey’s biggest newspaper, The Star-Ledger of Newark that also boasted being one of the nation’s largest is preparing to jettison 167 workers including 40 newsroom staffers. 

This paper attempted to transition into the Internet age with a website and addition of video reports. Obviously the problems with the newspaper’s bottom line were not cured. 

Traditional media as we knew it is on life support everywhere in the world.  Broadcasters and newspapers have billions invested in presses and broadcasting equipment that has become a stone around their necks.  Anyone can acquire adequate equipment for a few thousand dollars to send quality pre-packaged or live video around the world. 

Our new large television screens are rapidly making the transition to bring us web content along with traditional broadcast equipment.  It’s only a matter of time before TV broadcasting towers come down everywhere.  Cable providers are rapidly losing out to wireless providers. 

There are still those people to ignorant or otherwise trapped in a technology bubble, that rejects or otherwise has no access to computers.  Those that can read newspapers, listen to radio or watch television.  Those offline folk’s numbers are shrinking every day and soon they will have t accept the changes.   Internet navigation has never been easier and is getting simpler every day.

Broadband his improved and reaches nearly everyone.  A large segment of the population is satisfied to get their news on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.   They have abandoned the traditional sources.

The most difficult part of this media meltdown is the derailed careers, missed house payments and divorces ahead for unemployed journalists.  How do people that invested more than ten years in a career deal with an industry depression?  Those that are lucky to remain employed have shrinking paychecks and benefits.  

Twenty or more years ago the people unable thrive in a newsroom went to work for government agencies as public information officers.   Now solid reporters and TV anchors are begging for those PIO positions. 

The only good news here is that the singular Leftist lockstep slant of mainstream media is dying too.  News and opinion has become democratized by technology.  The problem is most of the bloggers are working for free or next to nothing.

Matt Drudge the granddaddy of bloggers made millions by aggregating news from multiple sources.  He created a single one-stop international news page with a Conservative flavor.  

Some bloggers have found lucrative careers like Alex Jones by over-sensationalizing every conspiracy theory to a hungry audience of believers.  Others that cater to a specific audience like firearm aficionados have built audiences and appropriate advertisers.

The greatest journalist in the world won’t succeed on the Internet with out learning web promotion as they navigate in a world of catchy buzzwords and meta tags. 

Who will pay for hard-hitting investigative news exposés of corruption, fraud and conspiracies?  Correspondents must travel, stay in hotels to get interviews and gather records and information for stories that sometimes just don’t develop. 

Breaking a huge news story is a waste if you don’t have an audience to appreciate it.  As other news providers learn of a big scoop they will plagiarize it and make it their own.  Copyrights are almost impossible to enforce on the Internet when the offenders are either off shore or don’t have deep pockets. 

The whole media thing will somehow shake out but where it ultimately goes is anyone’s guess.