My lifelong dream has been to learn to fly a helicopter. Ever since I found out what a helicopter was I've wanted to fly one. But it is expensive and after an accident in my teens my balance has not been so good and there has never really been the time or money to achieve this dream. But isn't the quote from Robert Browing "A man's reach should exceed his grasp/or what's a heaven for?"?

Over the last ten years or so multi-rotor RC models have become popular. Most of these are quadcopters but a few are hexcopters with six rotors and some with even more. The price of these had dropped as the popularity has grown and I find myself in the position to be able to afford one.

As many of you may know I have a small sailing boat and sail on the local river when the weather is suitable. Downstream from the moorings where I keep my boat is a sluice and beyond that the river is tidal and more complicated to navigate. The main problem is the mud banks in the upper sections of this tidal stretch of the river.

About twenty-five years ago some kind soul published a book of hand-drawn sketches of the river with various land marks visible from the water and the locations of the mudbanks. You cannot get this anymore and it is well out of date but even so, a number of the members of the Cruising Club still use this guide having noted the changes in the positions of the mudbanks in pencil at the beginning of each season.

During a Club Social a few months ago we were discussing the possibility of using a quadcopter, or drone and they are also known, to fly down the upper sections of the river at low tide and photograph the mud banks so that the members could have an up to date reference. One of our members owns company that also flies drones commercially and suggested that this might be a good way to go. But nothing came of this for one reason or another.

Still, it go me to thinking that if I learnt to fly a drone then I could do this and I would also be able to fly a drone for fun. And, although it isn't flying a helicopter, it is perhaps as close as I am likely to get these days.

To cut a very long story short, I bought a drone. Well, two, one small indoor drone and a cheap outdoor drone. I have had great fun over the last few weeks flying these. The indoor one is much harder to fly that the other as it is not GPS enabled with other fancy stabilisation but it is great to use when the weather is not suitable for flying outside. Tina mentioned a few days ago that I now had a hobby that I could do when the weather was not suitable for sailing, and that is true. When the wind is fair I sail. With zero wind I fly a drone outside and when it is too windy to fly outside or sail, I can fly a drone inside!

Drones have been in the news recently, the most notable being the Gatwick Incident of Christmas 2018. It is amazing to realise that over the three days of the event, with 140,000 people stranded at the airport most of whom would have cameras if only in their mobile phones. With the press camping out in their legions and legions of police and army personnel patrolling the area, there is not a single substantiated sighting of an unauthorised drone.

Not a single one.

The CAA's report mentioned that there were 129 reported sightings of which 109 were credible (I might have the exact numbers wrong here but that is the sort of range) and none of those were of drones that should not have been there. The authorities were using their own drones to try and find the pilot of the alleged unauthorised drone.

Nobody found anything.

Gatwick went up for sale that week and as a result of this incident the share price plummeted and so did the sale price.

Conincidence?

Personally, I think not.

Still, is is a very interesting time to take up drone flying as a hobby since from 1st July 2020 Britain will be adopting the EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) regulations for drones despite out not being part of the European Union as from the end of June 2020, the CAA made the wise decision to adopt the rules anyway.

A drone, by the way, in case you didn't already know, is any unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV something also called a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) be it model aeroplane, helicopter, multi-rotor or such like with the exception of tethered balloons and kites.

At present, in order to use a drone to earn money you need to have Permission for Commercial Operations (PfCO) from the CAA. This requires you to attend a costly course, pass an exam, develop an operations manual, take a practical flight test and then submit your manual to the CAA who then audit the manual and eventually you get your PfCO, renewable every year for a fee and audit by the CAA.

As from 1st July 2020 you don't need to do any of this to earn money from your drone. The regulations are not concerned about why you are flying a drone, just that you do so safely. You may still need to get a certificate but this will depend on how close you will need to be flying to uninvolved people.

There are also a number of interesting new drones coming onto the market and the CES technology exhibition in Las Vegas in January is traditionally the place where new drones are displayed and launched. One has already been leaked whilst it was getting FAA approval and it looks to be a stunning drone. So much so that the worlds leading drone manufacturer, DJI, with nothing like it ready to go, will probably start a price war in order to keep selling its own drones whilst it gets its act in gear and produces a competitive drone. This in turn, along with the perceived tightening of drone regulations, has resulted in many drones being offered for sale at very good prices.

Just before Christmas I purchased a second outdoor drone, £2100 of drone and associated equipment for a mere £800, plus £14 shipping. A fantastic bargain and this will last me for the two and a half years before the EASA regulation become permanent, there is a two year transition period from 1st July 2020, after which I will only be able to fly my drones far away from 'people, vehicles, vessels and structures not under my control'.

By that time I'm hoping that the world's drone manufacturers will have produced a new set of drones for the recreationally market that conform to the EASA regulations.

We shall see.

In the meantime I'm having great fun flying the drones and reading up on modern photography and videography techniques since multi-rotor drone are, in effect, flying cameras!

Watch this space.

I looked at myself in the mirror this evening and decided that I am starting to look a little gaunt. It is time to stop the diet and start eating 'normally' again.

I have achieved a weight of 70kg (~11st) having lost 28.5kg (~4st 7lb). My waist now measures 77cm (~30 1/4") having lost 29cm (~11 1/2"). It is enough.

Now comes an interesting phase as I transition back to non-diet eating. I shall have to be careful not to over eat I the next few weeks and let my body get used to having more calories to digest.

A very successful 24 weeks.

Today's investigation is in the use of Amish Friendship Starter and wholemeal/white bread, again using the Turbo, No-Knead method. Since the white flour version of this came out so well I used the same proportions except that I used half strong, white bread flour and half strong, wholemeal bread flour. The initial rise time was longer again that the 100% white loaf but still acceptable and the second rise was about twice as long at a hour.

The results?

Not bad at all. It hasn't risen as much as the 100% white bread but it is not as flat as some of the wholemeal breads I have baked.

Again with my mug as a size reference.

This bread was also made with a starter that was nearing feeding but the bread still tastes a little sweet, so I guess that the sweetness or not of the starter is not that important to the taste. This loaf will also have to be frozen until required otherwise 'll just eat it all. I'll save a piece or Tina but after that, in the freezer it will go.

The next experiment will be the same recipe but with the addition of Vitamin C and some honey to increase the rise.

Stay tuned.

Progress these last few weeks has slowed to the point where it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain enthusiasm for the diet. The slow down is not unexpected since I have lost a large amount of weight and as a result my body is burning fewer calories per day. The only way to increase the weight loss now is either to reduce my calorific intake significantly below 800 calories per day or by doing some exercise or both. Neither of these avenues are particularly enthralling so I am of a mind to continue the diet until 16th September and stop at that point. I will have been on the diet for 6 months at that point and I figure that whatever weight I have lost in 26 weeks is probably as far as I am going to get.

So, the statistics. I currently weigh 72kg (11st 4lb 11oz) having lost 26.5kg (4st 2lb 6oz) which is just under 27% of my original weight. My waist measurement is 79cm (31.1"), a loss of 27cm (10.6").

I am very pleased at this result but, as I said, it is becoming harder to stay on the diet due to the slow down. The new target of 26 weeks is probably the only reason for me to stay on the diet right now and I will be glad to stop at that point.

I think it is fair to say that the Fast 800 diet has done me a great deal of good and hopefully I shall be able to keep the weight off in future.

Stay tuned.

For some reason a while before we went on our Broads cruise at the end of June, Tina mentioned that it would be nice to bake an Amish Friendship Cake to take with us. Now this involves making a starter and it requires ten days before you bake with it, as I found out when I looked into what was required for such a cake. The best website I found is the aptly named Friendship Bread Kitchen which has all you need to know about baking Amish Friendship Cake (or bread as the Americans call it) as well as a lot of different recipes to try with the starter once made.

So, I duly started the starter going and cared for it for the required ten days and baked two loaves from a cup of the starter the day before we went on holiday, and very nice they were too. However, this left me with about 4 cups of starter, one of which is supposed to be used to continue the starter going. However, since we were going on a holiday for a week I could not stir it daily as required so I froze the lot in single cups amounts. On our return I took one portion out, defrosted it and continued on. This is recommended practise and I have the starter still going today. I also have a lot of frozen portions since you end up each week with about four or five cups of starter to either give away or freeze.

Now, in Germany, Amish Friendship Cake is known as Hermann Tieg, or Hermann Cake, and a friend, who took one portion of starter in order to have her own, combined Hermann and Amish to get Hamish with which she named her starter.

I liked this idea but didn't want to use the same name for fear of confusion, so I named my starter McHamish!

Despite baking quite a lot of Friendship Cakes since I started I still have about eleven cups of starter in the freezer which would be enough for twenty-two cakes and needless to say, the number of frozen starter grows each week. This isn't too bad in recent weeks since I can take two cakes to our events and offer them around. Likewise, the next three weekends, including this one, will give me an opportunity to bake more cakes to give away but not enough to reduce the amount of frozen starter, although it helps.

I decided that I would try using a starter when baking bread. The Amish Friendship Starter is a bit like a sourdough starter except that it contains milk instead of water and has additional sugar. This generally means that when you bake with the starter it has just has been fed with more milk, flour and sugar and as a result it is quite sweet. However, if you remove a cup of starter from your live batch just before you feed it, then most, if not all, the sugar will have been consumed by the yeast and it will be a lot less sweet if not sour as a result. So it is not so far out as one might have thought. The Friendship Bread Kitchen website does have a couple of recipes for bread but these are for kneaded bread and I wanted to try the no-knead, turbo bread that I've been baking.

Today was the day. I baked the required two Friendship cakes this morning, one for Tina to take to her Working Equitation session tomorrow and one for use to freeze and after that I started a no-knead bread but reduced the amount of yeast, water and flour in the recipe and added the cup of starter instead. The resulting dough seemed to be about the correct consistency but did take about twice as long to rise the first time than before. Nevertheless, it did rise and I put the dough into a cane Banneton to rise the second time. This time the dough rose in the time I expected and it was transferred to the hot Cloche in the Rayburn.

Here's the loaf fresh out of the oven and not yet removed form the cloche, just the cover taken off. Looks amazing.

The loaf on a cooling rack with my tea mug just for the sake of size comparison so that you can see just how well risen this loaf has become.

On cutting the loaf after it had cooled the crumb was fine and the bread had a soft texture as well as a very slightly sweet taste, not surprising as the starter was ripe (just been fed) and the consensus was that this bread would do very well with both sweet and savoury toppings but especially jams and marmalades.

We will see how it is tomorrow after it has had a chance to dry out a little and I'll toast a slice to see how that tastes as well.

A successful experiment. The next loaf to be tried will be the same in quantities but with a starter that is take from the live batch just before it is fed. Then it will be on to a white-wholemeal blend which is the type of bread I'll want to be baking once the diet is done.

2019.08.11

The bread makes very nice toast, possibly too nice considering that I'm still on a diet. The loaf has now been wrapped in cling film and put in the freezer otherwise it will get eaten very quickly.