The Ronin RS 5 is here. I will say this for it. For once, I can balance the camera properly. Proper balance is the key to using the Gimbal. The other key is walking smoothly. All the tutorial refer to it as the Ninja Walk. I do not have the Ninja walk, more like a drunken stumble. I have been practicing, but every shot has this little side to side rock. It’s annoying. More practice is in my future.

I do acknowledge I look like a lunatic using the camera and gimbal around the yard. I am practicing pans. I do long dollies. I am tempted to head up to Yosemite so I can at least film more interesting material. The big problem I foresee is time. It takes a moment to get the whole rig together. I’m pretty sure the tour group won’t want to wait while I balance the camera. Tomorrow I’m going to see how well the Ronin/Camera rig sits on my tripod. Fingers crossed it is not too heavy.

Sortie Reports

Researcher Heather delivered a 800mb tranche of sortie reports over the weekend. The cover almost every day. Sadly the report for the first day of the second battle of Alamein is missing. But the El Alamein push started at night on the 23th. I’m thinking the boys of the 64th weren’t out flying at night in support. I do have a sortie report for October 25th, 1942 which I believe is the day they first participated in the battle.

12 P40’s of the 64th FS set out as bottom-cover 10 18 Boston-bombers. The target was the 15th Panzer-Div. bombs were dropped on target area during heavy and accurate A.A. Moved over target from N and bombed S to SE, from 10,000 ft. Saw fiver fires W of target. Saw one parachute open and Boston-bomber go in and crash at 854293. One bomber made forced landing of vicinity of 850290. Other bomber crashed and burned near 877283. 13 bombers escorted back to base.

Bomber formation :stacked-up: and spread out made it difficult to cover as escorts. Speed of bombers over target area too slow for satisfactory escort.

All escort planes returned safely to base.

C.A. Nelson

1st Lieut., UsAAF,

Sqdn.Intelligence Officer.

I have hundreds of these reports. I am quite happy the .pdf includes the sortie report for April 18, 1943, the biggest day in 57th History. April 18 was the day for the Palm Sunday Massacre. The 57th caught a big group of planes over Cape Bon fleeing Tunisia back to Italy. They shot down more than 70 planes in the engagement. The sortie record, I have a copy of, is the official record of that day.

T-Minus

Two weeks from tomorrow, I will be starting my long flight to Cairo. I have promised myself that every time I think I am on a long flight to Cairo, I will remember my grandfather’s diary. There are sections where it is just page after page saying, “At Sea” A twenty hour flight is nothing.

I still have a ton of things to do. I want to reread my grandfather’s book for the relevant passage about Egypt. I will probably skip the passages about his intestinal flu. I want to type out passages from his actual diary to see what he was doing. I still need to lock in some of the locations he visited, particularly the Red Cross service center in downtown Cairo. I know where the enlisted men went, still hunting for where the officers went. The big project is still to organize his Egypt pictures. They’re not great, but they do show where he was. I think the best one is the Sphinx with the sandbags. I’ll be heading through gate to see the Sphinx as one of my first stops.

Tour Guide Problem

I’m still fighting with my tour guide Omar. Fighting might be too strong of a word. I had ordered two day trips through the Egyptian travel agency. I cancelled one when I realized if I went on the tour to Saqqara, I wouldn’t have any time to see Cairo. I asked for more information about the trip to Giza and the pyramids. I particularly wanted to know when we would be arriving on site. I was told we would roll in at the comfortable time of 8:30. Nope. Sunrise is at 6:30. I need to be there as close to that time as possible.

Mr. Omar said that would not be possible. Again, nope. I said I would go early and just meet up with the tour when they got there. I was told this was an impossibility. How would I ever find the group?

I started looking into the costs of going to Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum on my own. Uber would only cost me $5 to get there from my Hotel. The double pass for both sites was only going to be $62. What was I paying Omar $150 for? I told him to cancel the tour. Mr. Greg the tickets for entry will be at your hotel and you can most definitely meet up with the tour group at Giza. For now, I am still with the tour.