Tomorrow, 1/31/18.... NOVA special on solar impulse flight.....

May not be available to everyone, but from AOPA.......

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/...-to-television

Just a heads up......

Bump up, 9PM eastern, 8PM central on PBS........tonight...

On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 4:50:51 PM UTC-5, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
May not be available to everyone, but from AOPA.......

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/...-to-television

Just a heads up......

Fabulous doc showing the complexity of this project and the
setbacks encountered; a team of 90 engs and techs and managers,
plus ground crew. How did they move the team from airport to airport?
Would love to see a systems diagram for the Solar Impulse.

JMF

Was interesting watching. As usual the presentation bungled anything technical. E.g. they compared the glide from 28,000 feet to a jetliner, saying the jet would reach the ground after 20 minutes and the Solar Impulse after some hours. No word about the glide range, given that the jetliner would fly at 10x the speed... Anyway, yes, it required a huge team, and certainly burnt a lot more than "a drop of fuel". Their agonizing decisions about risk-taking are something for us glider pilots to ponder. Finally, in the last leg, at night over the Arabian desert, the pilot was working hard to make best use of the updrafts and trying to stay out of the downdrafts (at night!) - soaring after all, regardless of the solar aspect :-)

Glad you guys saw it, I'm sure others did as well.
Local to me, it ran again tonight.
Yes, they could have dropped some drama and went from a 2 hour show to 1.5 hours, maybe even less.

Still decent exposure, not complaining.

Just figured it was something different and others might want to know about it.

Charlie just watched this for the second time. There are direct parallels with our hard deck discussions. The solar impulse team demonstrates the continual dicotemy between engineers/administrators and pilots. If they had done everything the engineers/administration wanted during the flight, they would have never suceeded. There is a time when its the pilot who has to call the shots and who has ultimate responsibility for his fate.

In the real world, specially in any form of racing or record setting, neither rules, regs, insentives nor disincentives amount to spit. The pilot makes decisions based on his temperment and his value system. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

In the NY metro area, on again tonight on "Nova" at 9. It's 2 hours long.
May be on your local PBS station.

Why they show this and not Cloudstreet I don't know, I have about Cloudstreet before.