It is 70 degrees in the shade as I write this on a wonderful February sprinter afternoon. It will be 40 or lower tonight and in the 20s over the weekend. It’s great weather for anglers to get out and look for perch moving about. That action is beginning in the warmer waters of Maryland. Those fish are loaded to spawn, too. Tyler is still catching his trained yellow perch. 

The best way to check water temperatures is to use the USGS survey stations. These stations have all kinds of water parameters in graph form. Just google USGS National Water Information System: Web Interface. Look for the map for your state. Each station is a dot on the map. Click on the station and you get real-time information.

Massey’s Ditch and the surrounding Inland Bays peaked at 48 degrees this afternoon at low tide. The water has been rising two degrees a day due to the mild weather over the past four days. You can see the upward trend continue from the last warm-up. Spring is coming. 

If these stations don't have a tide indicator, you can figure out the tide in real time if you pay attention to the temperature graphs' curves. The peak temperature in the winter or summer is low tide. Incoming tide cools the bays off and the peak low temperature is high tide. Guessing where that will be that day is the trick and the graph's week trend helps you come close.  

The Coast Guard has stickers available for SUP and kayak owners or any watercraft that is not registered. If they find an abandoned kayak or similar type of craft, it is much easier if contact information can lead the Coast Guard to an owner quickly by phone. This saves them from deploying to look for a lost kayaker that doesn't exist, and you get your craft back faster.    

The Delmarva Outdoors Expo is coming to Harrington April 29 to May 1. There have been a lot of shows coming back this year and they have been packed with vendors loaded with great products. I’m looking forward to more vendors this year and the Dock Dogs.  

This crazy weather teases us weekly for the want of spring. It is certainly making photography difficult, especially remote rocket pad photography. 

Saturday, Feb. 19, at noonish, NASA lit a candle. Antares headed toward space to rendezvous with the International Space Station. It was another successful resupply mission for NASA, Northrop Grumman and The Wallops Island Flight Facility Crew. Congratulations to all for a successful launch.

Due to COVID restrictions, the media has less access. There aren’t tours of the facilities these days to feed our inner nerd, but we are still able to sign up for remote cameras at the launch pad or viewing access. Remotes, please! This is one of our new addictions - getting the shot at the launch pad with remote camera set-ups. This is harder to do than noodling a bluefish.

If you are a serious fan of second guessing yourself 50 times in an hour only to go back to your original settings, then remote rocket launch pad photography is for you. The goal is to get a shot of the rocket as it leaves the pad, while you aren’t there to take the shot.

There are dozens of factors to consider when setting up the cameras to take the shot. The advanced remote money shot is to get the engines in full blaze, which is the hardest shot to achieve. There are weeks of preparation for an hour of set-up for a few second shot window.

We started small a couple years ago with some GoPros and still cameras. Everyone thought the GoPros were nuts until they saw the footage and pictures. The bucket of sand for ballast was a little over the top, too, and was dubbed R2D2 by the folks at NASA.

Now many of the pad photographers are adding a GoPro to their arsenal. The GoPro Hero Max 360 camera takes crazy cool footage.

One issue is you need at least 36 hours of battery back-up. Modifications are made to the GoPro housings to accommodate external power sources. A deep cycle car battery does wonders and lasts for days. Once we set up the still cameras and GoPros, it is just wait and hope everything does what it is supposed to do. The waiting game will drive you crazy.

Just like how it feels when that big fish gets away, not getting the shot is exactly like that. No matter the cause, you blame yourself, or the fish. Mostly that stupid fish. Technology fails all the time. It is part of the game. It isn’t like you can ask NASA to do it over again. If you miss, you wait six months.

Weather is a huge factor for remote cameras, as well as the temperature. Antares tends to launch in the dead of winter and summer - two completely different or opposite weather situations. It makes it a real challenge for all the rocket photographers. Our friends from out of town all talk the next day’s weather. We just laugh.

Y’all know you’re in Delmarva right?

What’s that mean?

You’ll see in about 15 minutes.

On Friday afternoon, Cody Croswell and I set up the cameras. We had three GoPros and his one still camera - he wanted to try an engine shot. There was a lot of quick planning for placement on the way out, with a few settings changes on a recommendation from Jon Reino, with Spaceflight News. The still camera was set, and we placed the GoPros. Now we wait. Please don’t scrub, only two cameras have enough juice for two days.

Antares launches on time the next day. I meet the pad crew and we head out to retrieve our gear. We are escorted onto the island by our NASA guides. It is really cool to be able to drive out onto the island. Seriously, it is really exciting and for some reason we all get giddy about it. The Wallops Rocket Chasers are a fun group. We are outdoors folks that are also space nerds. 

In case you were wondering why NASA? If you are using any tech for fishing, hunting, GPS, etc., yeah, that would be thanks to NASA. Also when we are outdoors, the roof over our heads is space. So when NASA said we could come to launches, beam me up Scotty!