Monthly Archives: August 2025

Drone Compliance

flying
DroneBeacon db120

Piggyback on the drone is this stick-on dongle. It is a broadcast RemoteID transponder. It serves as a tag; a wireless number plate. It provides dentification and location information to help the FAA or law enforcement to track unmanned aircraft in flight.

Within the local range of a mile or so and position accuracy of 100 lateral and 150 feet vertical are designated minimum requirements for local detection.

Since the device is publicly broadcasting, anyone can receive if they are also in the area. One can download an app. Shown below is sample output from OpenDroneID OSM.

The UAS ID on the readout is the serial number of the transponder linked to the drone operator. This number is registered with the FAA. All of the rules of the road can be accessed here and LEO complaint guidelines, here.

This external ride along adds 25 grams and will induce an aerodynamic drag penalty. The alternative would be to replace the old drone with one that has UpToDate internals. $$$

Mavic Air (updated)

UAV safety for the public.

Fig Garden

social

Shaw Avenue is only 2 lanes. Fig Garden Village doesn’t yet exist, in fact North of Shaw is mostly orchards. “Old Fig” confines are ‘twixt Van Ness Blvd and Palm Avenue. The image is from a collection of aerials maintained by the Fresno State University. The snipped below is from 1954. View the full sized [here]

1954 Aerial Survey

De Vaux’s Delmar Rose Swimming Pool

This pool, depicted in the lower RH corner of the 1954 aerial, was open to the public. Women wore rubber swim caps (there wasn’t a filtration system). The pool was drained as required and the water refreshed from the water tower. Those are individual dressing/changing booths along poolside.

The story began in 1916 when Delbert, Rose and their daughter Margaret moved from San Francisco to open the first Chevrolet dealership in the Central Valley area. Shortly after their arrival, they began construction of their beautiful home in a then-distant rural area at the corner of Maroa and Rialto. The home was completed in 1919 with stunning landscaping and two firsts for residences in Fresno: the first underground sprinkler system and the first private swimming pool. In the mid 1920s, Delbert had a falling out with Louis Chevrolet and lost the automobile dealership. Delbert and his brother, Norman, who had long-term ties with the automobile industry, started another dealership under the banner of Star Automobiles. In 1931, they introduced a new model called the DeVaux which was manufactured at plants in Oakland and Grand Rapids. The Star dealership closed in 1932. It was a brief run in the burgeoning and highly competitive automobile business that was also confronted by the nationwide Depression. With the closing of their automobile agency, Delbert and Rose saw opportunity to remain in their home and make it an income-producing asset. They decided to rent their small private pool and the surrounding park-like grounds to private parties. Since it was so popular, that same year they built a second larger pool called the Del Mar Rose, named after Delbert, Margaret, and Rose De Vaux. During World War II, the pool was used by the Army for water survival training by troops being sent overseas. The original small pool and surrounding areas served as an Officers Club for Camp Pinedale and Hammer Field servicemen. Many local families recall riding their bicycles to this grand pool, later known simply as De Vaux’s. One of the most prominent features of the De Vaux Estate was a large water tower that was visible for miles. It was a main water source for the entire property. Behind the two-story family home, another building with a three-car garage and a three-bedroom apartment was used for the service employees. Today, the only remaining original structures are the elegant family home and two front entrance ways. In 1962, ten visionary founders of [the FGS&R Club] bought the seven-acre estate from Rose De Vaux and converted this historic community treasure into the member-owned and family-oriented FIG GARDEN SWIM & RACQUET CLUB.

Badges?

cars

A whirlwind tour of Dale Varnam’s junk yard Fort Apache revealed a derelict black sedan accordingly brought indoors under its own steam a decade or two ago. Blockaded by further horded stash over time, I figure here it will remain in this spot for the duration.

With much to see and no time to linger I swung my phone camera to grab this photo with the intent to identify the automobile later.

Make, model, year? Sans badging that is more of a challenge. Google Lens and Grok AI saw the tall radiator and proclaimed it a Rolls Royce possibly so no help there…

The is late 20’s or early 30’s and I browsed google images of hood mascots. Only high end cars of that era came so equipped and the Goddess ornament came into focus almost immediately as belonging to Cadillac (or sometimes grafted onto sister car, the less expensive junior Cadillac entry – LaSalle). One problem; none of those cars had the radiator shell resembling this one. Knowing that other GM makes shared from the same parts bin, I picked the next tier down and sure enough the grill style on this oldie is from Buick.

restored comparison

Buick had their own flying lady but this is not she and this ain’t a Cadillac. MIA on the black example is the floating badge that mounts between the headlights that was new for 1930. That would have made identification too easy.

The 1930 grill design differs from 1929 and it was revised again in 1932. A tape measure on the wheelbase would have nailed down the specific model.

The black sedan discovery is a (30 or 31) Buick, personalized with an embellishment from a period Cadillac to trick us.

Big Data

computers

I wanted to present 10 Years of jogging stats recorded with Runmeter an exercise logger. I used this app to display stats, in a way to offer incentive to self improve or at least to encourage workouts. Retired from the daily grind it is time to showcase it. I wanted to post all of my history in one large map overview.

Data Ethics: Your data should be YOUR data –empathizing the importance of data ownership and control, particularly in the context of personal information. Runmeter allows for the export your data and other apps may allow or should act similarly.

Before starting a run I would dutifully activate my tracker. Various parameters would be saved as data points from which a statistical summary was derived. Included in the collection was a GPS trace route. I blogged the more memorable jog locations when away from home base with the idea to revisit them or allow anyone else who might be keen in doing so.

Each map has a subset of waypoint data plots (1,000+) that make up the track. Google Maps is obliging and allows users to import their map data without the complication of an API. However there are limits to this free functionality. A [Google] My Map is limited to one GPX file import per layer. A My Map has but 10 layers for a single map creation. Well, I have over 700 events. They will not all of them fit. Granted that some of these maps are repeats. I suppose I could weed those out. That would reduce the burden some but too tedious.

The solution was to combine ALL of the GPX files into one using an online file editor: gpx.studio Their merge utility would merge the contents while keeping the traces disconnected. The output was one very large (66 MB) file. But Google choked on it because of another My Map limitation a 5 MB size hard limit on an imported file. Curses.

Plan B. Sticking with gpx.studio, which is thankfully robust and displaying all of my individual files, I decided to export combined route maps in sections instead of all together. A gpx.studio utility Clean GPS points and points of interest with a rectangle selection tool.

Drawing a marquee around a map area that I considered to be of manageable size, I was able to export the grouping into a new gpx file. This file of 5MB or less could be accommodated by the My Map layer.

All groups imported to individual map layers completed, witness the end product embedded here: