Cecil Walker’s Blog

I haven’t updated this blog in a long, long time! Why? I’ve mainly been doing all my updates on Facebook!

On July 2nd, Leah Fe Walker was born at Good Samaritan Hospital to proud parents Andrew (my oldest son) and Amber. Of course she is beautiful. She’s done a lot of sleeping so far. When she’s been awake she’s eating, then it’s back to sleep again. Guess she’s determined to get a good growth spurt going [...]

Will was someone that I always enjoyed seeing at the track. He was good fun to talk to and gave me lots of advice. Even though I haven’t seen him in a while, I think of him fondly. What follows is a personal letter that Larry and Vicki Pond sent out. I thought I’d share [...]

I reached a 25 year milestone at Intel and was given lots of things to choose from as a gift. I thought this would be a great addition to the hobby bench!

(Note: Hover over the images for descriptions and click on them for larger photos!)

I’m enjoying flying planes far more than helicopters lately and given the choice, I’d rather fly my 2200mAh 3S Fusion-Pack lipos in my 3D Hobby Shop 47” Katana instead of the T-Rex! Here’s what you’d be getting:

Align T-Rex 450SE V2 (carbon fiber frame)
Align motor that came with it
Align ESC that came with it
3 – HS65MG [...]

I’m Buster and I’m the newest addition to the Walker household! I’m a little Pug with a cute little mug. This is only my second day with my new family but I’m already showing them that I like to play with toys and I’m pretty smart too.
 

This past April, I had the pleasure of attending Cornerstone’s Men’s Retreat held at Young Life’s “Lost Canyon” in Williams, Arizona. It was an amazing venue and the facility was first class all the way. Jonah Werner was the Worship Leader and he also gave us a concert Saturday night. Amazing musician and storyteller much [...]

I recently went on a motorcycle ride to benefit brandedPhx and became aware children all across the world, all across the US, right here in the Phoenix metro area are being held captive as sex slaves working the streets. Yes, children. Lured, abducted, trafficked and held captive against their will to be used as property. [...]

If you’re interested in keeping up to date or just staying in touch, you can usually find me on Twitter and/or Facebook! I also post photos on my PhotoBlog on a semi-regular basis (ok, whenever I get inspired) and I post videos on Vimeo. One place you can definitely find me is out on RCGroups [...]

I recently attended a IMAC Pattern competition at the East Valley Aviators (EVA) field south of Apache Junction. Pattern competition involves the precision flying of set patterns or routines. A simple Basic pattern may involve: flying straight and level, pull to a 45degree upline, level off then perform a Split-S manuever, fly back across the [...]

I spent a Friday and Saturday at the Arizona Electric Fest in northeast Mesa. I would have spent Sunday as well but our checking account wouldn’t have survived it! Here’s some photos and videos I took at the event. Some of the photos were taken by Chris Wuester while I was videotaping.

2009 Arizona Electric Fest [...]

When Andrew and Amber arrived for Thanksgiving dinner they gave us a new Christmas list. Since Andrew is famous for adding more things to his “wish list” each year I didn’t think anything special of it, that is, until I saw my wife’s reaction. She handed the list to me and I fully expected to [...]

Looks like I can only get the calibration “close”. I’m only 1 or 2 tenths  of an f-stop off. I tried it in both 60i and 30F frame rates. They both use 640 iso for the correct calibration. I just need to switch between 60 fps and 30 fps on the Sekonic.
Now to try it [...]

So, Adobe’s OnLocation is officially a very cool product. I was able to get the waveform pretty much spot on to 50% using an 18% gray card and opening up my Canon XH-A1 aperture to f/3.4. Now here’s where I’m stuck. My Sekonic L-358 will read either f/3.2 or f/3.6 but won’t calibrate in to f/3.4.
Anyone have any ideas or is [...]

My friend Mark Wallace pointed me in the right direction on how to calibrate my Sekonic L-358 meter to work with my Canon XH-A1 video camera. Out of the box, the L-358 works great with DSLR cameras with ambient or flash photography. No adjustments necessary.
But, when working with a video camera, you need to calibrate [...]

I started Saturday off by attending another Second Saturday Cornerstone community event at Harvest Oaks Assisted Living Center at Anderson Springs. Earlier in this blog, I posted a video from my first trip there. I got to spend some time getting to know Art better and a new lady named Evelyn. What a great way [...]

Recently, I built a teleprompter from lumber, glass and screws I purchased from Lowes. A teleprompter allows the person being videotaped to read script from a screen (the glass plate) while the video is shot through that same glass. How does it work? To make a teleprompter, the glass needs to be at a 45 [...]

Ben, Kevin and I went to the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona today for lunch. Ben is friends with some of the members and the club president. I brought along my cameras. I’ll be posting photos here!

I recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica. Our U.S. Service Manager team went there for a face-to-face meeting with the Account Managers that we work hand in hand with everyday. It was a very productive meeting that not only produced some much needed foundational material, it also was an excellent team building opportunity that will [...]

Here’s a much shorter, more punchy version of the “Second Saturday” video I posted earlier.
Shortened version of “Second Saturday” video from Cecil Walker on Vimeo.
Note: to see this video in a larger format, with HD turned on, hover over the embedded video then click on the word “Vimeo”!