I liked his "Plane Crazy: Building a Plane in 30 Days" on PBS.
Watching him try (and fail) to build a composite airplane says so much about the allure of modern techniques (I won't spoil the end, but old-school gets the last laugh). I've been less than enthusiastic about modern composites ever since seeing this show.
Bob's attempt (and short temper) reveals a good deal of hubris on his part.
The documentary is a fascinating failure and a masterclass in attempting to salvage a show when the whole premise for the show completely collapses.
Thanks for mentioning that, I hadn't seen any of his non-tech stuff before and it's a great watch. Even knowing absolutely nothing about building airplanes, it had me yelling "what the hell are you doing" as the events unfold. Everyone he talks to keeps saying that it can't be done and he goes for it anyway only to realize that they were all right. Even though the actual project is an abject failure it's still very entertaining.
I found a better rip of the documentary midway through this archive.org upload of off-air PBS recordings from North Carolina: <a href="https://archive.org/details/unc-tv-1997-vhs-720p-60" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/unc-tv-1997-vhs-720p-60 . It took like an hour to download and the tape hiss was pretty bad, so I ran it through Final Cut Pro's audio denoising filter and reuploaded it to Youtube here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxU4nnLkeA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxU4nnLkeA
JKCalhoun · · focus · HN ↗
Watching him try (and fail) to build a composite airplane says so much about the allure of modern techniques (I won't spoil the end, but old-school gets the last laugh). I've been less than enthusiastic about modern composites ever since seeing this show.
Bob's attempt (and short temper) reveals a good deal of hubris on his part.
The documentary is a fascinating failure and a masterclass in attempting to salvage a show when the whole premise for the show completely collapses.
[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/FSNzF-KSGiw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/FSNzF-KSGiw
ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗
I found a better rip of the documentary midway through this archive.org upload of off-air PBS recordings from North Carolina: <a href="https://archive.org/details/unc-tv-1997-vhs-720p-60" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/unc-tv-1997-vhs-720p-60 . It took like an hour to download and the tape hiss was pretty bad, so I ran it through Final Cut Pro's audio denoising filter and reuploaded it to Youtube here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxU4nnLkeA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxU4nnLkeA
teh_infallible · · focus · HN ↗