Day 14of 365 – MASTER CRAFTSMAN I spoke with a friend of mine yesterday. I was admiring her new AlienBees Vagabond II Battery Pack. "Ooooooo", a battery pack you say?! "What is this battery pack you speak of?" Essentially it's exactly that. It gives you the ability to use your strobes and monolights anywhere you want! Normally you would have to plug these into an outlet somewhere, however with a battery pack, that's not necessary. You can plug your light’s into the pack and shoot virtually anywhere. Well… anywhere that you can carry your equipment. Anyways, throughout the conversation she mentioned her beauty dish (another photograpy light) that she had received as a Christmas gift. That got me thinking (ahhhhh haaaaa). I'm not currently in the market right now for a Beauty Dish; however if I could make my own we may have a viable option on our hands. So having already owned everything needed short of a few nuts and bolts, I designed the new rig in my head and started building! I now have one more finishing touch to add to it. Currently the white diffuser that covers the front is TAPED on. Yes I know; cheesy; but it’s only until I can finish. Once I sew on the elastic band (that's right I said SEW), I’ll have the freedom to remove and replace the diffuser as necessary. I took a few test shots earlier in the night just to see what I was working with. I can see it already; this is going to be yet another light that I love to work with! On another note; the grinding wheel in the shot had been received for Christmas two years ago. It just made it's way out of the box tonight. What can I say.....I needed it! Strobist INFO: Shutter Speed 1/12 Aperture 2.8 ISO 100 Lens – Tamron 28-75 Focal Length 66mm White Bal – Sync Setup time: 30 Mins - I had to put the grinding wheel together so I could machine the piece of steel. Canon 580ExII at 1/8 power in DIY light strip approx 4 feet ehind and to the right of subjject 45' Silver reflector 4 ft and to thee right behind subject for extra fill light on background Late Evening – 10:00 PM– Low Ambient Light Subject - Myself

Assembled. The orange backdrop is the cutdown parachute =) Using full power (10mW) MSK modulation at 915Mhz with a bitrate of 250 kbps I was able to get over 1000ft of line-of-sight range. I have since changed this to 2-FSK at 38.4kbps which should give me another 12dB of range. I'll test this again once I get real antennas.