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Airspeed Video Feature – Aerobatic Conditioning

May 23, 2009 by 2 Comments


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These are the show notes to a video episode. You can watch online right here by clicking on this direct link. http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedVideoAcro01iPod.m4v.

So here it is! The first full-up Airspeed video feature. 14 minutes of good stuff featuring my last acro conditioning flight before heading down to Randolph AFB for the T-6A Texan II ride.

This is some new ground for Airspeed. I’m by no means abandoning audio. Audio will remain my primary vehicle. But some stuff just works better in video and this is a great example.

Please let me know what you think and how I can continue to improve Airspeed for the greatest and most loyal audience in the world: You guys!

Many thanks to Will Hawkins of Wilco Films for his tutelage in the mysterious ways of video editing. This would have been possible without him, but only with a lot of suffering and trial and error!

Contact information for Sutton Aviation (where you, too, can strap on a parachute and fly this very aircraft with this very Barry Sutton!):

Sutton Aviation, Inc.
Oakland County International Airport
6230 North Service Drive – Waterford, Michigan 48327
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Airspeed Alfresco – Inaugurating the Patio for the 2009 Season

May 23, 2009 by 1 Comment


This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to ahow audio? Please check out the other posts.

So I’ve finally had the opportunity to set up the studio in one of my favorite authoring spaces, namely my patio. It’s in the low 70s and sunny and it’s the perfect circumstances to categorize, edit, assemble, write, and think. Which is what I intend to do, along with a whole boatload of work from the office (three hours already billed today, so I’m taking a little break here and I feel good about that).

I have a lot to do. I have the seaplane rating audio to categorize and edit. I have pictures and video of that, as well, that I need to figure out how best to present. I have loads of audio and video from recent acro training that I need to marry up and then cut for release. And all of this is to say nothing of the great material from the T-6A Texan II ride (as well as the voiceovers that I need to write and record for that).

(By the way, thanks, Uncontrolled Airspace, for the kind shout-outs in Episode 135. I’ll try to not disappoint your listeners that hop over here for a taste!)


I’m still on a high from the Randolph AFB trip. Here’s a shot of Jo Hunter and Will Hawkins in the conference room that we used for the preflight briefing and as a staging area. One of the few pictures I think we have of Jo. She’s a wizard behind the lens but seems to avoid the other end of the lens for the most part.


One of the central resources of any incarnation of Firebase Airspeed (and especially in 94F San Antonio) is the beverage station. The hotel was very nice in almost all respects, but no fridge. So we loaded up the sink with ice and brushed out teeth using the bath tub. Got to get your priorities right!

Back to herding electrons. Look for really good stuff in the feed soon!

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More Shots from the T-6A Texan II Flight

May 20, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Check out the Airspeed episode Firebase Airspeed: T-6A Style right here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedFirebaseAirspeedT-6A.mp3.

The crazy-talented photographer and fellow aviation enthusiast Jo Hunter of Futurshox was a part of the coverage crew at the recent T-6A Texan II sortie at Randolph AFB and she made her Airspeed debut that night on the episode Firebase Airspeed T-6A Style, along with Will Hawkins of Wilco Films and A Pilot’s Story.

Jo shot stills, assisted with video, and contributed her distinctive Texas drawl (listen to the episode for details) to the proceedings.

Jo has posted several shots from the coverage at her site, www.futurshox.net and in a blog entry at http://futurshox.net/blog/blogger.html. Please be sure to check it out!

The lead shot of this blog entry is one of my favorites. After the flight, will shot some commentary from me for a Scheyden ad next to the aircraft. Glad I got a haircut the day I left for Randolph. I had developed a pretty good rooster tail in the helmet, but a little water and it looked like hair again for the shoot. And there’s nothing like a zoom bag, gee suit, helmet, and oxygen mask to make stuff like that just not matter.


Here’s a shot of the aircraft taxiing in. Maj Jarrett Edge in front and yours truly in back.


Just after takeoff. You can see the video camera pretty clearly in this one. I remain very indebted to the 559th and AETC generally for the accommodations that they made to allow this coverage. The in-flight video came out very well and we’re all pretty excited about it. I recognize that the jet teams have gee- and systems- based reasons for not flying better-resolution cameras, but I’m not complaining a bit about the Thunderbirds ride, but the video from this flight is orders of magnitude better than any I’ve seen from a jet team flight.

And the T-6A is such a wonderful-looking (to say nothing of performing) aircraft, I think the footage is actually more exciting than the jet team footage I’ve seen.

Will is hard at work editing and I’m going to be providing music and voiceovers to put together the video episode. I’ll also be doing a comprehensive audio episode of the whole thing and I’m hard at work writing and editing for that.

Are there luckier people on the planet? Three days of hanging out with perfectly resonant folks who love what you love for all of the right reasons. Having access to beautiful airplanes that turn mere pilots into the best-trained aviators in the world. Meeting and talking to the people at the top of their games who train the trainers. And now having a little breathing space to take that raw material and use it to tell a story to a loyal and enthusiastic audience.

I can’t thank Will, Jo, the US Air Force, and many others enough. Look for a great couple of episodes (probably a couple in audio and one in video) soon!

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Airspeed Video Teaser

May 18, 2009 by 2 Comments

So Will Hawkins of Wilco Films and A Pilot’s Story has begun to create a monster.  Namely me.  Will gave me a quick tutorial on Final Cut last night and I’ve now had a chance to integrate some of the video I’ve been shooting into a teaser for future Airspeed episodes.  The first will likely be the coverage of the T-6A Texan II ride at Randolph AFB last week.  But I’ll also try to load in bits of video from other experiences this summer and try to do at least a couple of bits of aerobatic video.
Stay tuned as Airspeed just gets better and better!
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More Frame Grabs from the T-6A Texan II Flight

May 16, 2009 by 1 Comment


This is a regular blog post. Check out the other posts for show notes and links to show audio and video.

I’m just now getting a chance to look at the video from the T-6A Texan II ride and start parsing out the pieces that are going to be the most useful. It’s also a great way to remember the flight and make sure that I get all of my impressions down so that I can incorporate them into the episodes. I thought I’d post a few frame grabs so that you could see what I’m working with.

The day was fairly overcast, which means that we’re going to have to pump up the color a little in places. That said, we have a lot of great sequences of flying by – and through – big ragged cumulus clouds, and those are going to be great once we make the clouds pop a little better.


Here’s a shot of the strap-in process just after we turned on the camera. The camera is mounted on one of the vertical structures above the front ejection seat and the horizontal stabilization bar of the canopy just barely clears it coming down. I mounted the camera and Maj Edge turned it on and hit the REC button just before strapping himself in. Here, the LtCol is helping me complete my own strap-in. I’m carrying the audio recorder in my shoulder pocket and I have a condenser tie-clip mic (sans tie clip) dangling behind my ear to capture the intercom and ATC sound. I was pretty worried about the audio because I’d never tried doing it this way before, but it ended up working very well. You need to adjust the audio levels once you’re taxiing to make sure that you have it right, but it worked very well.


A nice shot of me and the Texas countryside as the aircraft went vertical in a maneuver. It’s a little gray and shadowy, but Will is working on that in post. Want to talk superpowers? Will can change the weather in post and actually use those clouds to his advantage!

Just before touchdown on Runway 14R at Randolph AFB. It’s hard to see much up front for landing and I’m craning a little to get an idea of Maj Edge’s sight picture.

A lot to chew on over the next few weeks. I need to write the backing music, hit the studio to record it, and get the mix in process. I wrote a lot on the flights on the way home last night from San Antonio and there’s much more yet to write. And then there’s the triage of w3hat I’ve written to get the whole thing down to the core story. I feel a little like Quincy Jones sitting down with a whole bunch of stupendous material and trying to figure out how best to tell the story. My favorite problem!

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