Behind the Scenes at Walt Disney World’s Starbright Holidays Drones Show at Disney Springs

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I stayed after IAAPA in Orlando to see the launch of the GOES-R weather satellite (my camera phone video here) and also caught the opening night of the very cool Starbright Holidays drone show.  It only runs through January 8, go see it if you can.  Disney has released a  behind the scenes video:

And while not the best viewing location, we watched from the drone launch area over in the parking lot by Cirque du Soleil.  I didn't have my good camera with me but it's pretty impressive watching these drones take off like a swarm of bees and even more impressive watching them come in for landing.  Here's a little camera phone video I shot of the launch area and posted on twitter:

Huntington Harbor Lighthouse Festival 2016 Sound Systems Design

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Through current and former students Andrew Schild and Harley Davidson, I ended up getting involved with a fascinating and fun music festival on a lighthouse in Huntington Harbor. The coverage area was so large that I actually exceeded the area coverage of Meyer's MAPP program.  

I used Google Earth and Sketchup to get the site into a form that could be read into Meyer's MAPP Online analysis program:

With a limited budget, no place to rig a line array, and everything having to be carried to the island by hand in small boats, I advised that all the available Meyer UPQ's be stacked into one mega-array with some fill on the other sides of the lighthouse:

It was a lot of fun and the organizers seemed very pleased with the results.  Taking a boat back to the dock, I thought it was pretty cool that I could understand the vocals from the show almost a full mile away!