BarraMan's Mangusta 21 barraboat in Townsville, AUS

[jonnymac]

thanks Lee! what a beautiful boat and that performance says it all!

[Jeff]

I agree with the above, beautiful boat BarraMan!!! Jeff

[BarraMan]

I had a play with my drone the other day!





I wanted Darcy (the drone) to track alongside the boat, but for some reason it wouldn't do.

[glossieblack]

Nice. How long have you had shade?

[BarraMan]

Nice. How long have you had shade?

Since Xmas, Michael. The last time fishing in 45oC made me surrender!

You would have recognised the island!

[jonnymac]

Looks like a beautiful day on the water.

[TomW1]

How fast are you going in the second pic? Looks like you're up and going.

Tom

[BarraMan]

How fast are you going in the second pic? Looks like you're up and going.
Tom

Only about 20 kts Tom - got to give the drone a chance to keep up!

[Jaysen]

Did it just give up on the chase or did you have it programmed to hover at a point?

Can’t wait to see some pics of fish. Need someone to glance out my current lack of dis getting.

[BarraMan]

Did it just give up on the chase or did you have it programmed to hover at a point?

Its taking me a while to sort out the idiosyncrasies of the drone! Its max.distance to fly from home base was set to 1 km - home base being the position of the front casting deck at the time of take-off!
So it followed the boat for 1 km, then stopped and hovered - I had to go back for it!
Just when I think I have the drone pretty well sorted, it does something unexpected - or won't do something that I think it should, like fly parallel to the target that its locked onto.

Can’t wait to see some pics of fish.

You'll be waiting a while to see some from me! It was a bad day for fishing - very hot and quite windy. I found barra easily enough but they weren't interested in any of my lures even though they were feeding around the boat. I try to match my lure to what they are feeding on but it was what we call 'jelly prawns' (maybe tiny shrimp to you!), I had nothing to match that.

Was quite a difficult day for me. I lost a wheel off the boat trailer enroute to my fishing destination. I saw it depart in the rear view mirror. All five studs on the hub had sheared off! I would have said that I have never seen that before - but I have. Last year I stopped to help someone who had the same thing happen to his camper trailer. He blamed the alloy wheels which he said allowed the wheel nuts to loosen. I don't know! I checked them before leaving home - maybe I missed that wheel. We have had some issues with malicious tampering with wheel nuts in the past. I have towed that boat trailer more than 30,000 miles without issues like that!

Fortunately I carry two spare hubs with bearings, and two spare wheels - so I was able to do a roadside repair. I thought it interesting that only one person stopped to see if I needed help. I always stop to see if people are OK!