Failing Forward

Steps were taken this week, let's get into it!

From the field:

We got some flight time in on Saturday! It was absolutely not the best day for it - the wind was blowing at a sustained 15-20 MPH, with higher gusts. The drones can't fly in winds that high in the summer - we'd have to take a break until the winds die down.

Our first flying mission was to do some piloting of a tiny drone made by the same company as the big guys. This gave us a feel for the same type of controls without the massive consequences if something went wrong. I thought that was such a good idea, I plan to buy a little guy drone to practice with. It might be nice to have that along in season just in case a drone were to go down in the field.

But then we moved up to the big guy. That was significantly more nerve-racking, but only because of the price tag on them. They aren't difficult to fly, but we did have a couple moments that made us realize that we still have practicing to do before the season starts. One moment was my own, where I got a little too close to a building. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, as there's a feature called obstacle avoidance that will cause the drone to stop and hover in place when it gets too close to something. However, it was windy, and the wind was drifting it directly towards the building. I had to hand off the controls to our instructor, and he helped me right the ship.

The other incident included landing the drone, but not actually completing the landing operation. This caused the drone to tip over somehow, but no damage done.

I'm very happy that we had a couple "failures" in our flying missions. That's the best way to learn in my opinion.

The other item I'm trying to get out in front of is mapping, and I now have two of my farmers' fields mapped. I'm doing all of this from my phone, can you believe it? I'm working with other farmers now to get their field maps so I can program them in as well.

No movement on the trailer, but I expect to deliver it either this week or next, and the turnaround should be less than a week once they start working on it.

From the office:

I'm at a point right now where I'm trying to decide whether it's worth it to pursue more Upwork projects. I believe the answer is yes, but they'll need to be very short-term in nature. I don't want to commit to something longer term and then tell them, oh by the way, I'm basically off the grid in July and August. Can't imagine that'd be a great first impression.

What I'm reading:

I've been sticking to the book on neuroplasticity. It's a fascinating study, although a lot of the science is beyond me. I'm a numbers guy, remember? But slowly I'm combing through it and trying to implement some of the principles I'm learning in the book.

Thanks for hanging in - until next week!