When they can take off when the bird's don't even fly

Silvaire

Silvaire

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Silvaire
I know there are plenty of aviation movie threads but this one just showed up on YouTube and I think it deserves special mention. Yea it's a love story but the aviation stuff is real and not dumbed down, almost like they expected you to have some intelligence. No CGI either there's some pretty graphic shots of DC4's (actually C54 Air Force) dropping into Tempelhof. The movie was made on actual location about a year after the Berlin Airlift ended. Pretty interesting story about the start of the cold war.

 
Silvaire said:
I know there are plenty of aviation movie threads but this one just showed up on YouTube and I think it deserves special mention. Yea it's a love story but the aviation stuff is real and not dumbed down, almost like they expected you to have some intelligence. No CGI either there's some pretty graphic shots of DC4's (actually C54 Air Force) dropping into Tempelhof. The movie was made on actual location about a year after the Berlin Airlift ended. Pretty interesting story about the start of the cold war.

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Another airlift movie
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2668128/
 
Nice, thanks for that link!
I just finished reading "Candy Bombers" by Andrei Cherny, interesting stuff, maybe 25% directly about aviation, but, an overall fascinating historical account of that early Cold War period.
 
Generally a good movie with good actors. It's interesting to see Berlin in ruins as it was back then, it took decades to rebuild after the war.
There's an interesting scene showing a GCA approach into Tempelhof. I've done a couple of those at the local airport because the tower was run by the Air Guard years ago.
 
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Domenick said:
The Big Lift is free on Amazon Prime Video
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Weird, but there are two versions that are free on Prime, one that's 1h 59m, the other 1h 42m. The longer one looks like it has a better picture (better contrast, fewer scratches and shakes). Not sure what else is different.
 
The movie is even better with the YouTube closed captions. Reads like a Stooges script, with the possible exception of the “black haters” part.:rolleyes:
 
NoHeat said:
Weird, but there are two versions that are free on Prime, one that's 1h 59m, the other 1h 42m. The longer one looks like it has a better picture (better contrast, fewer scratches and shakes). Not sure what else is different.
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I noticed some missing scenes in the early part of the shorter version. The longer one also has better resolution.
 
MauleSkinner said:
The movie is even better with the YouTube closed captions. Reads like a Stooges script, with the possible exception of the “black haters” part.:rolleyes:
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I notice errors in closed captions quite often, including the ones in the longer of the Prime versions. It appears that the people who do them are not familiar with the subject matter.
 
Palmpilot said:
I notice errors in closed captions quite often, including the ones in the longer of the Prime versions. It appears that the people who do them are not familiar with the subject matter.
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In this case it’s automated captioning.
 
Palmpilot said:
Ah, well that explains it.
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The scene where everybody’s saying good night in German... “gluten nacho,” “Gutenberg nacho,”... was captioned “good enough,” “good enough.” :rolleyes:

of course, auto correct is almost as good as the automated captions...that was supposed to be “Guten nacht.”:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
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champ driver said:
Generally a good movie with good actors. It's interesting to see Berlin in ruins as it was back then, it took decades to rebuild after the war.
There's an interesting scene showing a GCA approach into Tempelhof. I've done a couple of those at the local airport because the tower was run by the Air Guard years ago.
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MPN-1A radar. Classic. It’s amazing the accuracy of something like that back then. Interesting to have separate displays for azimuth and glide path also. The glide path meter is cool too. Even the FPN-63s I used didn’t have that type of capability.
 
champ driver said:
I believe one of the most beautiful filmed classics of aviation films, "Strategic Air Command' with Jimmy Stewart had a GCA at the ending with his B-47.
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Yep. When it came out on Blu-ray it blew the DVD version out of the water. Way better clarity and color. Just watching the Carswell AFB B-36 sequence on a big screen TV is worth the price alone.
 
champ driver said:
There's an interesting scene showing a GCA approach into Tempelhof. I've done a couple of those at the local airport because the tower was run by the Air Guard years ago.
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There was a discussion on this forum some months back with some mention of GCA's. I offered an observation then that after the survailance operator handed you off to the precision approach (PAR) controller, that you got corrections as small as two degrees. That made some heads explode. And from some that I assumed were old salts. They stated that a two degree heading change was impossible. Yet Paul Douglas's character was issuing corrections of "heading 173, now turn left 171. On the glide path, turn right 173". That scene is in the last 30 minutes when the C-54 was on approach with one burning, three turning. It was filmed on location in 1950, so I assume it to be correct. GCA availability was always appreciated, even though VOR/LOC and the LF range was the vogue. Kind of went away after GPS showed up.
 
I though GCA stood for Guest Cameo Appearance
;)
 
Watched the film. I liked it.

The detail in demonstrating the radar approach guidance was especially good - way beyond what I would expect in movie for a popular audience.
 
Maxnr said:
There was a discussion on this forum some months back with some mention of GCA's. I offered an observation then that after the survailance operator handed you off to the precision approach (PAR) controller, that you got corrections as small as two degrees. That made some heads explode. And from some that I assumed were old salts. They stated that a two degree heading change was impossible. Yet Paul Douglas's character was issuing corrections of "heading 173, now turn left 171. On the glide path, turn right 173". That scene is in the last 30 minutes when the C-54 was on approach with one burning, three turning. It was filmed on location in 1950, so I assume it to be correct. GCA availability was always appreciated, even though VOR/LOC and the LF range was the vogue. Kind of went away after GPS showed up.
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2 and 3 degree turns are very common on a PAR approach. Its a common way to get an aircraft to turn one degree - 3 degrees one way and 2 the other. I'm glad I longer have to do it. I learned on the AN/FPN62 which was raw radar and later got the GPN22 which was basically a computer.
 
Pilot: Navigator, give me a heading for home.

Nav: Fly 276 degrees, sir.

30 minutes later...

Pilot: Navigator, are we still on course?

Nav: Just keep flying west, sir.

Pilot: I need better directions than that. What is the heading I need to fly.

Nav: Turn 1 degree right, sir.

Pilot. Do you know how hard it is to turn 1 degree?

Nav: Turn 5 degrees right, then turn 4 degrees left....
 
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