Changing Times: Social Media Groups and Streaming for Historic Aviation

Send me your email address to [email]nik@nikcoleman.com[/email] and I’ll send you a link to whet your appetite for Series 2. You are indeed right that decent so called ProSumer kit can produce great results if you know what you are doing in Post. Or, as we call it…. series two lol

Send me your email address to [email]nik@nikcoleman.com[/email] and I’ll send you a link to whet your appetite for Series 2.

Lmao. Hurricane there’s a great back story to. I was about to leave Peters house, and I was thinking, ‘hellfire I need a load of archive shots of India to make this work’ – and he then said ‘I dont suppose all my old home movies would be of use to you?”. Maurice and I are close friends, I spent a lot of time at his bedside when he was ‘asleep’ in hospital. Watching that ep is… hard… but, he’s in the new series…

Send me your email address to [email]nik@nikcoleman.com[/email] and I’ll send you a link to whet your appetite for Series 2.

It’s a good job I didn’t say I was underwhelmed with plane resurrection, (Nick) but the Hurricane episode challenged much of what I thought I knew, (which came via flypast magazine all those years ago) at the time it was hailed as being nothing more than a light restoration, but clearly that wasn’t the case; I also find it hard to watch the Mustang, but for very different reasons.

When you eventually fall out of love with a provider like Sky, everything you have on the “box” is lost; I also had a problem with the system, and the nice man on the phone said the only way to fix it was to delete all the recordings……it didn’t.

I have Piece of cake on the “box” but never looked at it; watched it on DVD the other night no breaks/ads just how it should be.

One of the best documentaries has to be a Spitfire story, I haven’t seen it for maybe a decade, but before that it was on nearly every week; there’s even a bloke on there who’s a dead ringer for one of our mods……..

Some interesting points here, and I agree with the question over long term data preservation. I’ve lost enough data already due to hard drive issues and other technology problems, including some priceless photos of my first child. (my fault for not backing them up, but I am going back 18 years and I was a bit of a technology novice then)

I do echo the issue with DVDs. I have a large aviation collection with some fantastic footage, a lot of which isn’t available online etc. But I still find myself getting my fix from the likes of Youtube etc. There is some great stuff to be found there, and I can easily spend the whole evening just watching Pathe stuff for example. I still have some VHS, which I cling onto as it hasn’t materialised on any other format yet…1983 GWAD for example. That one’s very precious to me.

Books on the other hand, are quite the opposite. I have quite a large library which I intend to keep and enjoy. I have had no urge to go digital with books at all.

Music? I hated the arrival of the CD with a passion, and only changed over as I had no other choice by the early 1990s when vinyl vanished overnight it seemed in the record shops. I did dabble briefly with Spotify etc, and it did have it’s appeal. That was short lived as I realised what I missed was the physical experience of playing a record, and so all of my CDs went and I bought a lovely 1985 vintage Technics stereo a few years ago instead. Once again, all of my music is vinyl and cassette….and it’s never sounded better!

As for the younger generation. If my kids are anything to go by, then they seem to be embracing the analogue. There does seem to be a slight kickback against digital as speaking to my son (16 years old), they want to a less digital life and enjoy a more tangiable experience with their books and music. He freely admits that he envies the analogue world of my youth.

Steve

I do often wonder if our current electronic age will be seen in future as a new Dark Ages, with material lost forever and yawning gaps in the knowledge of how we lived. Sorry if that sounds a little morbid, but the long-term preservation of data doesn’t seem to be proven.

Interesting thread and some good points.

One important quibble:

I really like the idea of having my purchases kept on Amazon or similar, with no more device obselescence issues to wonder about. It’s worked for my aviation magazine purchases…

Books have as many centuries of stable data preservation as every electronic medium has decades, and in those few decades, most electronic media have shown significant vulnerability, both to technical issues books never suffer from, and commercial conflict the books you or I own do not risk. ‘Your’ electronic data on Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and as already noted Dropbox, is in fact not under your control (essentially you’re ‘renting’ the media at best) and can (and has) simply vanished due to a commercial change by the media owner.

In short my physical paper library is currently far more likely to retain the data it contains safely than any online alternative.

In 2009 Amazon simply deleted the book 1984 from people’s own electronic devices, without the readers’ consent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

I’m also delighted to be able to see so much great stuff online (notably including moving pictures not in books!) but make no mistake, that’s all VERY ephemeral.

Regards,

I have “wasted” many an evening just sitting down with a mug of tea after work then one plane video leads to another. Having said that I still buy one or two magazines a month (aircraft, cars or mountain bikes) as I still like having something I can pick up and read.

Maybe it’s just me but I like having something in print. I still like books but sadly the number of book shops appears to be diminishing in the Amazon/ebay age. Notably the Transport sections that used to contain all the aircraft stuff have now been reduced to a shelf or two with not much more than the Haynes manual on the Spitfire, Lancaster and maybe the Hurricane.

FFW I still don’t have complete faith in “cloud” type internet storage of data.

For an object lesson in the transitory nature of the internet, you only have to look at the number of useful forum threads on a whole range of subjects which have been decimated at a stroke by the Photobucket debacle.

The big problem with digital media is its ever changing and somewhat ephemeral nature. Something I have noticed over the 15 or so years that I have had internet access is that useful/interesting stuff that I found years ago, is now no longer there to be found (website content gets changed, websites disappear, sections of sites or web pages get changed or deleted, and on YouTube particularly, accounts hosting interesting content change or are terminated – nothing on the internet is permanent) – I have gone to view a number of clips/films for which I have saved the links over the past few years, only to find the video is no longer there. If you find something you value, you need to save it yourself (although this may raise copyright issues, not least because there is much on YT that is infringing the original copyright by being there to start with!).

Facebook is a whole different ball-game; whilst valuable for the here and now, it is almost completely useless as a historical repository of information – posts rapidly fall down the page as new posts are made, and become difficult to reach (fair enough if you saved a link to the post thread you want to see, but unreachable for anyone else). Facebook is not searchable in the way that most normal websites and forums are, so is of no value whatsoever to anyone searching for information in the future….

…and that is before we even start on the major privacy issues surrounding Facebook – I would hazard a guess that most Facebook users have no idea the extent to which Facebook actively harvests the details of anyone using it – cookies and web beacons that you are forced to accept and which send back not only the details of your computer/operating system/browser, but also your geographical location, your personal details, and your browsing habits, not just on Facebook, but monitoring every website you visit, building up a full profile of you as a person and your interests (and foibles!). It builds up a massive and very detailed user profile linked to a Facebook user account (or to a specific IP address/computer if you view facebook public groups/pages without having an account).

Whilst it may serve a purpose for the dissemination of news in the here and now, I would not recommend Facebook as a suitable place for the posting or storage of any kind of archive/historical/important information or material. As a searchable archive/historical reference resource, a well structured web forum with carefully titled threads is an infinitely better tool.

I converted all of my VHS tapes onto DVD over many years, and have subsequently completed the digitising of them all into .mkv format (free programme from MakeMkv.com/download – use the Beta version, it’s been around for years and is stable) and store them on a large external hard drive and also in the cloud. Easy to catalogue and watch – and indeed upload into YouTube/Vimeo if someone has an interest. Once you get the hang of it, it’s very easy to do. This is a good way of preserving all these wonderful films/programmes/video’s for posterity – without the need for physical space! John

I must admit dvd’s have gone the way of magazines since the invention of the internet. I generally buy Flypast when I go on holiday to read on the plane, and maybe at Christmas. Youtube has some very interesting stuff and of course it is largely fee so you can just dip in. Would love to see the likes of the RAFM, USAFM,IWM etc digatise all their film holdings, every bit of it. Doesn’t need to be produced in any way just some details of when, where and what. It won’t be too long before WW2 is out of living memory, particularly the less participated in bits like BofB, Russian Convoys etc. When did the RAF cease to have a film unit? Did it cover Aden, Malaya, Suez etc?

Thank you for your inputs, interesting reading and food for thought. Perhaps this is one of those topics that just ‘is’, it’ll be interesting to see how things go. Collectively we (as a forum) must have a huge amount of data, much of it unused, but it is ours. Eventually much of it will, as Propstrike writes, go to another home and I always enjoy browsing the bookstalls at airshows, and looking for that elusive BofB The Movie by Robert Rudhall at a car boot.

Nik, we’ll done for your success with series 2, it’ll make excellent viewing if series 1 is anything to go by. Will it be on Netflix?

Nik, great news that more Planes Res is coming, and I am sure you will secure a big audience with the more USA-centric content.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek re the cost of kit, but I maintain that the high end consumer action cameras can obtain pretty reasonable footage if used sparingly for certain short sequences. No doubt decent gyro stabilised cameras for air-to-air are far from cheap, but even so it is astonishing the extent that technical capability has risen, how much bang you get for your buck, in recent times.

I hope it appears on Netflix eventually.

Oh blush. We make the Plane Res series. You are very kind and we are about to release series two. It’s been successful so for series two we’ve gone, um… lol, slightly bigger. We visit with, and fly on: Avro Lancaster Just Jane (well we taxi with her), B17 Texas Raiders, B24 Diamond Lil (which immediately suffered a double engine fail and emergency landing, we didnt touch anything!), P51C Tuskegee (first flight after wheels up landing), B29 FiFi and B25 Miss Mitchell. You’ll spot all but the Lanc are CAF planes, we have the run of their fleet. It’s like being in heaven. Series 3 in pre production, expect to see S2 on PBS UK. You can buy S1 on Vimeo too.

I love the phrase “high quality cameras etc are not prohibitive in price. Even a £300 Go Pro will give you broadcast quality for action sequences.” You have no idea lol. I’m the tightest fisted Producer on earth. There’s one blow away sequence in the new series that will have you saying “OMFG – on board two ship!”. £72 Chinese camera lol. It pretty much wrecked it and admittedly we do take £20k of cameras with us, but we also have some incredible 4k footage from an iPhone. Thanks for all your support. If anyone would like to email me and ask nicely, I might just let you have access to one of the slightly rough full episode previews! Also find Plane Res and lost of extras on Facebook.

It is revealing to pause, and reflect on how we now consume our aviation info/ entertainment. I too have a lot of VHS tapes, with some good content, but the image quality looks pretty duff compared to HD content which we have become used to. I don’t suppose I will ever sit down to watch them again, especially given the absence of a VHS player.

Two house moves in 8 years has forced me to re-assess what I need, and books have taken a big hit, with many headed down to the charity shops. I buy hardly any books now, and those I do are not usually kept. I was given a kindle with masses of titles on it, but have yet to even turn it on. Maybe one day.

The reality is we probably do not ‘need’ information in a ‘hard copy’. Having had an Amazon Echo for 3 months, I realise that a collection of CDs is probably obsolete, and as the nation’s houses get ever smaller, the ability to jettison ‘stuff’ becomes more attractive.

The monthly periodicals seem quaint these days, and of course are always behind with the news compared to online sources. Flyer and Pilot get thinner and thinner, and are often not stocked on the news stands these days. I would say both are hanging on. Aeroplane though, seems stronger these days, with really absorbing content, and the frantic comic-book style layout now in the past.

The sheer quantity of high quality streaming is amazing, and Go Pro Cameras have opened the floodgates. As SFF says, the difficultly is sorting through the almost unlimited content, and in that respect, this forum, and Facebook is useful for posting up the most engaging stuff. The immediacy is astonishing, and we can know about/see what is happening in Australia as quickly as your nearest town.

Plane Resurrection was widely admired, and there is no reason not to have similar productions. The ‘recipe’ is straightforward, and high quality cameras etc are not prohibitive in price. Even a £300 Go Pro will give you broadcast quality for action sequences.

In terms of access to information, this is a golden era and uncharted territory. Let’s just hope nobody ever turns off the internet, because when I look at people who literally cannot read a map, for instance, we would really struggle to survive if we had to return to a ‘paper’ world.

Interesting points.
As a restorer social media has proved to be no end of help, raising awareness of our project to restore an otherwise fairly obscure Cold War jet. Had it not been for that we wouldn’t have got 99% of the parts we have secured for 788!