This morning started with breakfast about fifteen minutes too late. By the time I got up I had about thirty five minutes to get to Staverton which was at least a forty minute drive away. I thought I’d try out the new sat-nav, which like all it’s predecessors didn’t have a clue about Gloucester airport. Not like it hasn’t been there since the second world war. Got there about five minutes late, James was rabbiting to someone so didn’t matter. I went for a pee then settled in charlie-delta. Did all the pre-flight, James jumped in, I fired her up. Bit windy today, airport was really busy though. We were burning off eight gallons an hour just sat there waiting for clearance. Eventually we took off to the north and did a few 3,000 feet auto-rotations. James made great light of the fact that we were, ‘only descending at 18 miles an hour’, which is still a bit quick to hit the deck at. We did about three auto-rotations and then went back to circuits. I nailed one on to Yankee perfectly. Did another one on to the runway, then completely cocked up the last one. Overall, had a great flight.

Meandered back home. Then I got a bit of a shock, there was a cheque for thirty-two quid. Now Im not going to go into this more until it’s cashed and hasn’t bounced, which I highly suspect it will. But at the end of the day, I managed to get one-up on a bunch of money grabbing pass-off bastards.

Had lunch. Then as it was nice day I took the dogs on a nice jaunt. We were out for a few hours, they had a good tun round. Came back and finished editing the latest part in the great USA road trip series. Did the accounts. Then when Jamie came home we went to the Italian. I had an amazing Sea Bass dish. See it comes to something where I’m prepared to sue someone for £32 quid, yet spend £85 on dinner. It’s all about the principal.

Tomorrow we are going to Jamie’s mothers for mothers day. I’m sure it will be delightful.

Yesterday started as normal, with me in bed. I did have to get up though to take the dogs out and then pop up to Staverton. Beautiful weather for once. Did another 1.3 hours, a few circuits, a high auto-rotation. Then some quick stops and some rather dramatic high speed ground manoeuvres, where I did indeed try to kill us. James actually swore, James never swears but apparently I did come very close to taking a pylon out. Took a full lot of head cam footage again which I’ve transferred to the Mac but haven’t had a chance to look at yet.

Popped in B&Q. Came back. We then sat down and started booking things for the trip. So hotels in Anaheim, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Boston, Washington DC and New York. Also booked tickets for a Vegas show. I lost count of how much I spent, mainly as I got through about two bottles of wine during the proceedings. I was due to cook, but couldn’t be assed so we ordered an Indian.

Woke up this morning to a phone call from a Scottish lady from Tesco bank, informing me that they thought they had detected fraudulent transactions. I said no it was perfectly normal to spend four hundred quid on helicopter lessons, about twenty in B&Q and then about a grand on hotels in the USA followed by a curry…in the same day. She upped my credit limit and unblocked the card.

As it was nice we did what all good gays do and went shopping. We actually did clothes shopping in Top Man. We never normally do this kind of thing together. I think Jamie was feeling fragile after I’d spent Friday nights bath chatting to an 18 year old called Jordan on Tinder. He worked in ‘PoundStretcher’. We also went in Halfords and picked up a new Sat-nav. I already have the USA maps on a memory card so shoved that in and all worked fine. I was rather cruel and tried to get it to route from my house to the hotel in Anaheim, it got to about 40% then crashed.

Sealed the floor in front of the washing machine, this is the bit Jamie soaked by overflowing the sink last week. I managed to dry most of it out with a heat gun. I’m still not happy with it. I may chop another 30mm off it and put an edging on. I’m getting very pissed off pulling the bloody washing machine in and out.

So tonight I have to cook last nights food. But bath first.

Don’t forget folks you can follow me on Twitter @mannmansion.

Also check out my new video “Prohibition and Prozac”

Lots of videos coming out in the next few weeks, just need to get round to editing them all.

Today was all about shaders again. This is beginning to be a recurring theme. The only break I had was looking at an issue with fibers. Thankfully shader wise, this batch is pretty much finished. There is one crash in the platform compiler which I’ve had to refer back to the supplier.

My UPS arrived, I knew they said it would be securely packed, but I wasn’t expecting it to me strapped to a full-sized wooden pallet. It’s still strapped to it as I needed to order some socket converters. It isn’t going anywhere, mainly because it weighs a ton.

Went to the gym and abused the cross trainer for an hour. Came back and played around with the CX2. To cut and short flight even shorter I managed to fly it up into the kitchen light and take the bulb out, spraying glass everywhere. Wrecked the bodywork and broke the landing skids. Fifteen quid on eBay later and a new lightbulb it was time to eat salad. Still felt hungry to finished it off with macaroni cheese and toast. Avoided wine. Actually now in bed fairly early. Dillon at daycare tomorrow. I have another exciting day with shaders.

Didn’t really sleep last night. Got up at six, took Sasha to daycare. Went back to bed, managed to sleep a bit. Woken by the postman. He said he may have a parcel for next door, I saw the cleaners pulling up, so shot upstairs to the bathroom. The postman came back and Jamie answered, he said, “Your dad said you’d take a parcel in for next door.” Shame, I liked that postman, he will have to die now.

Cleaners did cleaning, not very well, seem to do less and less each time. I think I need to make it dirtier and dirtier.

Worked on SDK upgrade. Got it all going in the end. Need to do yet another re-write on the shader compiler.

I actually walked Dillon, took him through the forest for once.

Picked up Sasha. Went to Pump. Increased my weights. Arms are looking nice. Managed to get a new map disc for the car sat-nav. Then got the model helicopters out. Flew he msrx, the mcx2 and the cx2. The small twin was fine. I even managed to get the msrx hovering nicely. The cx2 needs some gyro adjustments, but again got it flying without too many issues. Now have a stack of batteries that need charging.

Started this morning with a traditional hang-over, caused by a torture porn evening. Work today consisted of shifting around some constant buffers and then doing an SDK update. All went fine, until one part of the SDK update, which is now crashing with all sorts of overflows. I was planning on finishing on time, but that didn’t happen. Went to the gym and sweated over a cross-trainer.

Came back, had protein shake and then finally finished the helicopter video edit. Uploaded to youtube. It uses tons of plug-ins and us set to Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’. I’ve heard that song about 500 times now doing that edit. Still all done, hope people enjoy it.

Watched some telly. Ate salad, didn’t drink anything. Sasha at daycare tomorrow. Cleaners coming. Pump in the evening. Need to practice on model heli’s tomorrow as the weather is almost beginning to get better.

Had a fairly restless night, even after having sex at 3AM. Still, woke up early. Finally managed to persuade Jamie to get me breakfast. I had a text from Captain James and we were set for a 4:15PM take off. So I decided to get up get on with things. It took me a few hours to get the cloakroom door strip done and the door refitted. So by the time I’d tidied up and had a couple of boiled eggs it was time to set off.

Arrived bang on time. Airport was very busy, as this has been the only nice day in weeks. Wind was virtually zero. I attached my ISAW head cam, to my er, head. We refuelled Charlie Delta and I went through the pre-flight and started her up. The takeoff into hover was awful. Captain James took over and got us to x-ray. I then took over and got into the climb. We flew out over Tewksbury and looked at all the flooding. It was very picturesque, but probably not so much joy for the people actually down there. Did a few climbs and descents to get me back into the groove as it had been about five weeks. The it was back on to circuits, think I did four or five, until it got dark. They got better as I went on, but I was certainly rusty. Was good to be up again, will try and got up again soon, depending on the weather. Drove back and imported the footage, it’s quite impressive but I could of done with a little bit more light towards the end. I posted a few odd bits on Facebook, but want to get some more daytime footage and do a proper edit.

Finally bottled the Pinot. I now have seventy-two bottles of home brew in the spare room which I’m unable to drink for another twelve days. Had a bath. Made food, which was once again a chicken curry. So same again next week.

So yesterday I made a new video. It’s about QVC, actually it’s more about my mothers addiction to QVC and her ability to spend just under five grand in about sixteen months on complete tat. The video is a private listing at the moment, so won’t appear on a YouTube search. However you can view it here. Let me know what you think. Yes, it’s a bit personal, but I imagine quite a lot of people may have experienced something similar, plus it’s quite funny in places.

Today was bloody hectic. Had a shit load to do. Then I checked a load of stuff in in the morning. I was due for my medical at 2PM so I set off at 1:15. When I got to the M5 I realised that I’d forgot to check in an important file, so had to come back. Sure enough on the message board was ‘Tim has gone out of office and left 72 shaders with compile errors’. That would have been fun.

Got to Staverton only five minutes late. Had my class II medical which involved eyes, ears, sight, hearing, reflexes, a full 10 probe ECG, blood pressure, lots of coughing and prodding and of course pissing in a bottle. All was fine, no problem at all. The only sticking point is the Fluoxetine, which isn’t on the list of acceptable SSRI’s. Which is a pain in the ass. So now I either have to change to one of the three recommended, which won’t be a lot of good as I’ve already been on two of them, or come off it completely. I’ll phone my doctor tomorrow, well I phone for an appointment anyway, as the CAA will send him a request for medical history. I’ll probably end up just coming off them early, rather than in six months which was planned. I need to be ‘clean and free of symptoms’ for four weeks. I’m not sure I’ll ever be free of symptoms, but the last thing I’m planning on doing is parking a helicopter in crowded street. It seems a bit strange, but I guess they have their rules for a reason. I think I’d be more depressed if I couldn’t fly solo. It doesn’t really hinder my training as there’s still a shit load I need to learn on dual still, even then there is the advanced stuff that can be moved forward as necessary.

So after all that, drove home, fixed more shit I’d ballsed up then went to the gym. Finally in the evening I sat down and finished the days work off properly and gave it all my concentration. I’m now closer to where I want to be, but not as close as I’d hoped by this stage of the week. It’s all been a bit shit really.

On the positive side, I’ve managed to find a car rental company that doesn’t take the piss when it comes to one-way drop off fees. Now I just want a coupe rather than a Cadillac. I think a convertible isn’t going to be big enough, when the roof is down there is enough space for a small sandwich.

I went to have my dinner. Jamie was cleaning the fridge out and put my stuff on the counter. Sasha promptly ate my chicken. So all I had was a hard boiled egg. No wonder I’m depressed.

This morning started off in a bit of a coughing fit. I was 50/50 about weather to cancel this mornings lesson. I was feeling fine, but just coughing everywhere. I had breakfast and coffee, then cleaned up lots of dog shit, then decided to go for it. Easy drive up to Staverton. God, it was busy. Everyone who owned a plane or could get hold of one was up today. It was a really gorgeous day, very low wind with massive visibility. We took off to the south to avoid the queue on the airfield and circled around the edge of Cheltenham. We then went up above cloud layer and looked down which was fantastic. Then we did a couple of auto-rotations from 3,000 feet. Then James said that I was going to do a normal approach, but to give me a bit of a target I had to hit a tiny island, which wasn’t much wider than the helicopter in the middle of a lake. It was great fun, managed the landing no problem, got James to take the controls and took a quick photo:

Took off again and back to the airfield. Spent the rest of the lesson doing circuits, which I’m now getting down to a fine art. Was all great fun and I think I only coughed about twice.

Came back home, walked the dogs and then it was into Stephen Spielberg mode. I set up the video camera, printed out my script and then spent the next three hours filming footage. Won’t say too much about it at the moment, but it involved changing a hell of a lot of t-shirts, a power drill and a Pikachu onesie. Got a load of editing to do on it next, but I think it’s going to be quite fun.

Jamie came home from his Sonic bumming session in Weston and we popped into Tesco’s and then to B&Q to pick up some carpet tiles for the hall. Did the accounts, all the filing. Think I’ll have a quick bath before making myself a killer curry.

I woke up at 6:30 to take Sasha to daycare. The news was on the radio. There was a helicopter crash, a military one on night operations, all four crew killed. I came downstairs and the dining room was covered in poo. I think actually it was Sasha as Dillon is somewhat more accurate. I called Jamie down to clean it up. I gave Sasha her breakfast but she only ate a small amount. She seemed fine anyway. Took her to daycare, no problem. Came back and washed the floor. Went back to bed.

Then I had a weird dream…..I was flying with James and we were doing an autorotation from 3,000ft. For some reason we were carrying a giant pallet on the end of a winch rope. All was going to plan until I spotted a load of pylons, then I panic’d. James took over and we flew under one, then there was a big bang and the helicopter landed in a heap. We both got out alive. But I remember looking back round and seeing the large pallet dangling from the pylon. I’m flying Saturday, I’ll look out for pylons.

The cleaners arrived early. I started work. Was more preparing data and updating tools. I didn’t get to any interesting stuff until this evening.

Jamie was at the dentist, he came home a couple of hours later with GoT’s boy and a new phone. They were both wearing matching trackie bottoms and looking fat. Breakfast at Nando’s no doubt.

Went to Pump. We did the new one, it was fun, but painful. Came back and did more work. Had salad.

So yesterday we somewhat meandered for a bit before having breakfast. It was then a quick trip to Tesco’s to pick up a couple of bits and the sorting office. Came back and packed up, then took the dogs to the kennels. Swung back and picked up our stuff and then we headed down to Bournemouth. It was a horrible drive, it was pissing down and the roads were flooded. Took about three hours in the end. Got there just in time for a shower before descending downstairs to the bar. It was Jamie’s granddads 80th birthday party. Met lots of family I haven’t met before as well as caught up with a lot of others. We see each other very rarely. Meal was fine, I set next to a couple of teachers who were lovely. We did have one odd chap on our table, I couldn’t decided if he was nice or just a bit of a dick. I stuck the beer, I was fine, ordered room service.

Next morning we got up for breakfast no problem. It was then lots of hanging around while various photographs were taken. Eventually managed to leave just gone eleven with another three hour journey. Picked up the dogs, had some lunch and then took down all the Christmas stuff. Cleaned the couch, which considering it has two dogs clambering all over it, it’s in perfect condition. Put the new gyro in the CX2, works beautifully, had it hovering in the kitchen no problem at all, need to take it outside for a good play. I tried one of the same gyro’s in the CP2 but it wouldn’t initialise so I’ve gone back to the stock 3-in-1 so will try that with the new transmitter setup. I’ve had it taking off okay, so again, need to play with that outside.

Right, just put everything in the loft now, then bath and food time. The first normal week starts tomorrow. Back to combat as well, looking forward to that.