Since one of my publishers seems unable to find instances of where I’ve made efforts to promote my work, I’ve added a list of recent radio and podcast appearances to this site. You can find the list at the bottom of the Digital Media on the new Appearances page. In most instances, you can click a link and hear the interview or podcast in question.
I want to mention here that I am available for interview or panel participation on radio shows and podcast episodes. Contact me if you have something in mind that you think I could contribute to.
I do actively promote my work as a writer. I don’t, however, feel comfortable with the level of self-promotion that some authors indulge in. If this results in lost work, so be it. I’m not prepared to sell myself like a cheap commodity to score points with a publisher who’s more concerned with self-promoted brand names than quality work.
I flew up to Chelan, WA to visit a friend on Wednesday. The weather here in central Washington State has been too good to force a cherry drying pilot to sit around and wait for rain. I’m sure my clients didn’t even miss me. (Heck, I could have been back in Quincy in 30 minutes if they needed me.)
I flew direct to Chelan, enjoying some low-flying over the wheat fields of the Waterville Plateau. I know where all the wires are up there and I wasn’t that low. But I do admit that I enjoy the rush of flying at 120 miles per hour 100-200 feet off the ground. The flat expanse of the Plateau is perfect for this kind of flying — you can cover the entire north-south distance without flying over a single home or business.
The descent down to Chelan is always a thrill. First I sometimes need to climb a bit to cross over the tops of four or six sets of high tension power lines that run east-west across the north end of the Plateau. Then I’m at the edge of the Plateau and the earth drops away to the Columbia River over a thousand feet below. My two-bladed rotor system makes it dangerous to do a nose-over dive like you might see in the movies. Instead, I have to content myself with lowering the collective almost to the floor and settling into a 1,000 to1,500 foot per minute descent rate. I always descend downriver from Chelan Airport, so I have to bank to the right and follow the river northeast. By the time I get to the airport, I’m only 100 feet above its field elevation, mostly because it sits on a shelf over the river.
I used to do this flight a lot more often when my finances were better and I could afford to fly on my own dime. Things are different now and I’ll likely make this trip only once or twice this whole season. This was my first time this year and I’ve been here nearly two months.
My friend met me at the airport. He’s a helicopter pilot too and he’s also in Washington to dry cherries. His helicopter is parked at an orchard. There were two other R44s parked in a field at the airport and I parked with them. But I didn’t bother shutting down. I invited my friend to join me for a flight further up the river to Brewster, where another friend of mine’s old Sikorsky S55T (and that T stands for “turbine”) is recovering from a mishap last season. We flew up the river, pointing out all the orchards we’d dried in the past along the way.
Close Call #1
Back at Chelan, I parked with the R44s again and shut down. The Airport Manager drove up with his dog in his pickup and chatted with us as I locked up. We could hear the sound of a helicopter running on the other side of an old hangar. The airport manager told us about the pilot, a man who had likely been flying helicopters since before I was born. As we chatted, we could hear the engine winding up as the pilot got the helicopter to full RPM. My friend started walking toward the hangar to get a better look at the pilot’s departure; he was out of sight from where we stood.
A sickly bang! sound rung out. It was not the kind of sound I’d ever want to hear anywhere near where my helicopter was spinning. An older helicopter came into view around the front of the hangar, flying erratically. The pilot got it under control easily and continued hover-taxiing to the fuel pumps about 100 feet away. As he set it down, my friend picked up a piece of something and started walking back to us with it.
It was a splintered piece of wood.
Meanwhile, three men in a hangar nearby came out onto the ramp. Together, we watched as the pilot shut down the engine. The blades slowed. They didn’t even come to a full stop before I saw the damage.
The outboard 6 to 8 inches of each of the two main rotor blades had been severed. My friend was holding a piece of one of them; the other one was on the ramp. The blades had struck a steel I-beam that extended out beyond the hangar walls. He’d probably hovered past that spot a thousand times in the past. This time, he cut it a bit too close.
I call this a close call because of what could have happened. The blades could have disintegrated as the pilot hovered. He could have lost control of the helicopter. We could have been dragging his injured or dead body out of the wreckage. Worse yet, the wreckage would likely have flown all over as the helicopter beat itself to death on the ground. My friend could have been struck with flying debris. Heck, I could have been struck, too. And I wasn’t even that close.
Needless to say, the pilot was very angry with himself. We all felt bad for him, but there was nothing else to do but wheel the helicopter back into its hangar until repairs could be made.
Close Call #2
I had a nice day in Chelan with my friend. We had lunch at a downtown cafe where we could sit outside in the shade. Then we went to Blueberry Hills and had some pie. (I had to skip dinner to keep my calorie count down for the day, but it was worth it. I love rhubarb pie.) Finally, at about 6, my friend drove me back up to the airport. We said our goodbyes, I climbed aboard Zero-Mike-Lima, and started up.
A small private jet made a magnificent departure from the short runway just before I was ready to take off. He climbed out as if a rocket were strapped to his back.
Conscious of the wires around three sides of my landing zone, I took off on the fourth side, heading right over the river. I didn’t climb much; once I was over the cliff, I was already at least 500 feet over the river. I flew downriver at that altitude for a while. I wanted to follow the river all the way back, but there was a fire burning near Wenatchee and I’d forgotten to call the FSS to see if there was a TFR. So I figured I’d just go down the river a bit before I climbed back up to the Plateau and made my way back that way.
I saw the other paragliders first. There were at least five of them, flying in lazy circles about 200 feet above my altitude, to my left. They were close enough to see their colorful canopies, but not close enough to see whether they were powered. But I didn’t look long. Movement much closer caught my eye and I spotted one at my altitude less than 1/4 mile away.
I swerved to the right, away from him. I then kept scanning the airspace all around me, looking for others. Thankfully, I came up empty.
My onboard video camera caught the action. This is a clip from the flight. The paraglider is in the picture right from the beginning. Look slightly right of center near the top of the frame. His canopy is yellow. I spotted his friends at about the 0:09 mark and banked a bit to the right; I spotted him at 0:15 and made a more aggressive turn.
The quickness of this encounter (or near encounter) is quite evident in the video clip. The video is only 20 seconds long. When you’re moving along at 120-130 miles per hour, things happen fast. It turned out, he was going the same way I was — and I’m pretty sure he was powered — so he probably didn’t even hear me coming up behind him. At his near-stationary speed (when compared to mine), I was upon him only seconds after he came into view.
I am not accustomed to seeing any aircraft other than helicopters at my altitude, so to say that this shook me up a bit is an understatement. Just because you don’t expect to see something doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
No More Mishaps
The rest of the flight was uneventful.
I climbed up to the Plateau, crossed over the big wires, and settled down for another relatively low flight across the wheat fields. I took a detour later on, following a canyon down into Lower Moses Coulee, over the town of Palisades and out over the Columbia River south of Wenatchee and its fire. I flew low-level along the eastern shore of the river to Crescent Bar, then climbed up to the Babcock Bench to scout out a geocache location up there. From there, I flew out to Quincy Lakes, overflew the Ancient Lakes and their waterfalls, scouted another geocache location, and headed back to the ag strip where I’m based until July 20.
I’d flown a total of about two hours. It was my first time out flying in two weeks. (I sure wish it would rain again soon — if only to wash the dust off the helicopter.)
It was good to get out — and good to get shaken up a bit. I’d seen two instances of complacency rearing its ugly head. Fortunately, no injuries; just lessons learned.
I thought it might be good to illustrate what it looks and sounds like on video. You can find the video at the bottom of this post.
Before you watch the video, please read this explanation. The video is not narrated; I wanted the helicopter sound to be heard. If you don’t read this, you won’t know what’s going on or why.
At first the helicopter is at cool-down RPM (around 65%). I’d just come in from a flight and was getting ready to shut down when I decided to use my Flip camera to make the video.
I wind up the RPM by twisting the throttle. Watch the tachometer in the upper right corner. Needles are matched for engine (E) and rotor (R) RPM.
When RPM gets to about 80%, the R44’s electronic governor takes over and brings it up to 100-102% engine RPM (the green arc).
I simulate a low rotor RPM situation to test the system. (The system is required to function for flight so I test before every flight.) This requires me to raise the collective about an inch and then slowly roll off the throttle to reduce RPM. You can hear the engine pitch change and see the needles start to droop.
At 97% RPM, the warning system engages with an audible horn and a light. A pilot who misses this would have to be blind and deaf (and thus, would not be good as a pilot).
In the test, I push the collective down to shut the horn off and let the governor roll the throttle back up. If the horn came on in flight, you’d use the low rotor RPM recovery procedure, as discussed in “Reacting to Low Rotor RPM,” to regain RPM before it dropped to the point where it was not recoverable and became catastrophic.
Here’s the video:
The system looks and works slightly differently on different helicopter models. But the basic operation and test is the same.
Making decent videos is more than just pointing and shooting.
I’ll start with a true story.
A friend of mine who also writes computer books bought a Flip video camera a few years back when they were still pretty new. If you’re not familiar with Flip, it’s a very small, point-and-shoot video camera that captures an hour of medium resolution — good enough for Web, anyway — video. (Newer versions are “HD” and capture 2 hours.) She went out with this camera, shot a bunch of video clips, strung them together in a “movie” using the Flip software, and published them to the Web. She then tweeted proudly about her achievement and invited friends to view it.
I viewed it. It was terrible. The video was shaky. The clips were long, pointless, and boring. The ambient sound — which was the only sound — included wind noise and off-camera voices and sounds. In all honesty, I didn’t waste my time with the ten minutes it ran. There wasn’t any reason to watch it. It didn’t show or tell me anything that interested me in the least bit.
That was a valuable lesson for me. If you’re going to share video, don’t share crap video.
Documentary Videography
I’ve been wanting to get involved in the documentary filmmaking process for some time now. I didn’t really want to make the video myself. I was always more interested in getting a gig as a writer or researcher for a professional production, to apply my existing skills in a new way and learn about the process as I worked with an experienced team. Unfortunately, I have no connections in that industry and I’m not ready for a career change (yet). So I decided to give it a try myself.
My biggest challenges are time and software know-how. After a false (and expensive) start with a video production company that took lots of my money and delivered only headaches, I decided to stop screwing around. You know what they say: if you want something done right, do it yourself.
Just because I want to do it right doesn’t mean I could immediately do so. There are a number of steep learning curves to climb along the way. I’ve been climbing them over the past few months. A few weeks ago, I managed to release a pretty darn good rough cut of a 5-minute documentary about the cherry harvest process. Over the following few days, I finished it up by adding title screens, a music soundtrack, and end credits. If you haven’t seen it and are curious, you can find it in an earlier blog post, as well as on YouTube.
The Series
This morning, I thought I’d start a new series of articles that documents what I’ve learned so far about making “pretty darn good” videos. This will help me remember what I did and learned as well as provide a general guide for other amateurs who want to create watchable video. Throughout this series, I’ll use my cherry harvest video as an example, so you might want to watch it just to get a better idea of what I’m talking about when I refer to it.
One thing I won’t cover in this series: recommendations on cameras or details on how to use the software I used to create the movies.
I don’t know anything about any camera other than the one I worked with. In all honesty, you should be able to do a good job with something as simple as a Flip or any consumer video camera model. Even an older one! As long as you can get the video into your computer, you’re good to go.
The software really doesn’t matter, as long as it has decent editing tools. (I use a Mac and Final Cut Pro, but iMovie should be fine on a Mac and I’m sure there are good, affordable video editing packages for Windows, too.) What’s more important than software is your ability to capture good video and put it together in a “story.” You’ll see what I mean as I go through each part in this series.
I’ll post links to each part of this series in this introductory post as I write them. Stay tuned.
October 21, 2011 Update: The series of articles I wrote for about this topic has been converted into a book. You can learn more here.
A while back, I wrote “Why I Suspended my Facebook Account.” I just reread it and it still rings true. But Facebook has again gotten in my face and I need to make a decision.
Facebook has proliferated to the point where it’s impossible for anyone in business — especially the business of writing computer-related content — to ignore. It’s everywhere. “Friend me on Facebook!” has become the robotic chant of businesses and individuals all over the country. I have tried to play the part of South Park’s Stan but Facebook continues to intrude on my life.
Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for Maria Langer, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help. You can also get us started by suggesting the Official Facebook Page.
So I have become a Facebook “topic.” I don’t know if I should be flattered or horrified.
(And, by the way, if you have “a passion” for me, I’d love to know. My husband might be interested, too.)
My Current Career Situation
Meanwhile, my dual careers as the creator of how to books, articles, and video training material about computers (which I’ve been doing for 20 years) and helicopter charter operator (which I’ve been doing for 5 years) are suffering along with the economy.
Print publishing — especially of computer how-to material — is dying a slow and painful death. The widespread availability of the same content — usually for free — on the Internet is destroying book sales. Just about anyone can use Google to find the answer to a computer or software question online. (That doesn’t mean the answer will be right, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.) There are numerous blogs, including one of mine, that provide how-to information with the same step-by-step instructions I built my writing career on for free.
This is what publishers are competing with. They know it and they try to fight back by stressing the simple fact that their content is being created by experts. But no one seems to care. Why spend $20 on a book that might answer a question when you can spend 20 minutes with Google and the World Wide Web and get an answer for free?
As a result, most of my books are not being revised. The most recent casualty to this trend was my Excel for Windows Visual QuickStart Guide which I have been revising since I wrote the first edition for Excel 95. Look all you want for an Excel 2010 edition — you won’t find one.
The world of helicopter charters is even more shaky with the economy the way it is. My last season in Arizona was dismal, with very few good charters — certainly not enough to pay the bills. The agricultural work I do during the summer months is a lifesaver for the business. Without it, I’d likely have to sell the helicopter and close up shop.
And I’m not the only one in this situation. Helicopter operators and flight schools have gone out of business all over the country. Most people simply don’t have money to spend on things they don’t really need. Who needs to fly in a helicopter? Very few people.
Enter, Facebook
And then there’s Facebook, sitting out there, presenting itself as a free way to make contact with potential readers, video learners, and helicopter passengers. A marketing tool, waiting to be used. Like a worm sitting on the grass, waiting for the a bird to snatch it. But is there a string attached that will drag me down into a hole?
I could reactivate my Facebook account. It’s easy. All I have to do is log in. Everything is there, just where I left it.
Of course, I did strip out all my personal information — or whatever information I could — to prevent it from getting into the hands of people I didn’t want to have it. I’d have to build that back up, selectively, to make a real profile page.
Then I’d have to build pages for each of my careers, keeping them up to date. I’d have to visit them regularly to keep in touch with my new “friends” and respond to their comments on my “wall.” I’d have to accept friend requests from strangers and then struggle to figure out which ones were real people and which were spammers trying to sell me their crap. I’d have to find new people to friend. I’d have to post on my wall and their walls. I’d probably have to fiddle around with the never-ending collection of applications, trying to figure out what they do, how they work, and why I should use them. I’d have to build a presence for myself on Facebook, in a community I have no desire to be part of.
I’d be going through the motions just to satisfy fans and mollify editors. I’d be playing the game because it was expected of me. I’d be spending hours of my life every week on a marketing tool that might get me a handful of new readers and video learners but would more likely expand the audience for the free content I already put on the Web.
Time is one of the most valuable things I have. My freelance lifestyle gives me more time than most people have. But I don’t want to waste it. I’d much rather spend it on things that are important to me, learning or doing something interesting, something worth remembering, worth writing about, worth sharing.
Is Facebook any of that?
There’s more to my life than writing on virtual walls and tending to imaginary farm fields.
My friend met me at the airport. He’s a helicopter pilot too and he’s also in Washington to dry cherries. His helicopter is parked at an orchard. There were two other R44s parked in a field at the airport and I parked with them. But I didn’t bother shutting down. I invited my friend to join me for a flight further up the river to Brewster, where another friend of mine’s old Sikorsky S55T (and that T stands for “turbine”) is recovering from a mishap last season. We flew up the river, pointing out all the orchards we’d dried in the past along the way.
A friend of mine who also writes computer books bought a Flip video camera a few years back when they were still pretty new. If you’re not familiar with Flip, it’s a very small, point-and-shoot video camera that captures an hour of medium resolution — good enough for Web, anyway — video. (Newer versions are “HD” and capture 2 hours.) She went out with this camera, shot a bunch of video clips, strung them together in a “movie” using the Flip software, and published them to the Web. She then tweeted proudly about her achievement and invited friends to view it.
And then there’s Facebook, sitting out there, presenting itself as a free way to make contact with potential readers, video learners, and helicopter passengers. A marketing tool, waiting to be used. Like a worm sitting on the grass, waiting for the a bird to snatch it. But is there a string attached that will drag me down into a hole?