cameras, intercoms, planning
Several of the airplanes had GoPro cameras on the wingtips. The Mythbusters crew made some brackets that picked up the screws that hold the wingtips on. For different segments, the cameras were aimed differently to capture the different formations. The chase/camera-RV had a hand-held, production-quality camera with a Mythbusters cameraman. They had also scheduled a helicopter for camera work, and that was kind of a story in itself. The "beauty shots" from the helicopter were to be at the end of a long day of flying, and it was hot (like 100F) They got the Mythbusters camera guy all set up in a safety sling in the open door of the helicopter, and took off. The Ravens set up for a fly-by of the hovering helicopter, and just as we approached, the helicopter had a yellow overtemp warning light on his gearbox (its ALWAYS the gearbox!) and had to land. I think we were secretly glad that happened -- it was a long hot day of hard flying for everyone. I think we ended up with footage from 11 cameras. The editing and production is done in Australia, and I think the director had to get permission from the editors to send so much film footage.
We tried a couple of intercom arrangements. The mythbusters crew have some nice portable recorders, but there was an issue with mic impedence being different between aviation headsets and production audio equipement. At one point we were just going to put mics inside the headset ear cups. But the West Coast Ravens also have some intercom recorders, so I forget what configuration we actually ended up with. I think they had both the dedicated recorders and headsets for Kari, Tory and Grant, and also got the team intercom communication.
Louise's comment about Kari looking like she was sitting in a bathtub in the back of Slick's RV-8......I brought her TWO 2" booster cushions to sit on, that was the best I could do.
Planning: The Mythbusters folks have been to our water channel several times for previous episodes, so they were pretty familiar. I sent them a sketch of the model support requirements, and Kari built the models from regular plastic models. They were Bf-109's. The lower wing skins were omitted to keep the wing sections very thin, very important for ultra-low reynolds number flow in the water channel. (1-2 inches/second). So we sanded a nice contour onto the underside of the upper wing shells. We shot film for another episode that same day in one of our small wind tunnels, so it was pretty efficient for their crew, but it was a long day.
I met with the Mythbusters sound crew guy ahead of time so he could fit a camera bracket to my -8, and we did an engine-on sound check....thats when we found the impedence matching problem.
I met up with Bob (Nasty) Mills, Tim (Slick) Cone, and Scott (Spike) Randolf to talk about various ways to do the flight experiments. I think we ran the airport cafe out of napkins making various sketches. Then we went on a trial hop to see if we could actually measure benefits. Nasty described those test trials pretty well, I think we were all pleasantly surprised how well the tests went. Using constant throttle and measuring speed differences was in some ways a much more graphic illustration of the formation benefit, but in the end, after many dialogs with the Mythbusters folks, we settled on the fuel flow measurements.
Two of the test trials were especially interesting. For one, we joined up on Nasty as lead in a right echelon, while he held constant throttle setting. the whole formation sped up 2 kts from his initial speed (which showed that the lead got a useful benefit in an echelon formation). The reverse-V as Nasty described was very impressive. We stabilized the formation and then, the two leading planes of the V moved further apart laterally, and the middle airplane slowed down about 5 kts.
The lead Ravens (Slick, Nasty, Spike) then worked with the rest of the team to get all the pilots up to proficiency in finding and holding the "sweet spot". There was an extensive dialog laying out the test cards and then the actual briefings.
It was a really impressive eye-opener for me to work with the Ravens and see how they approach their job. Formation work is serious business and they approach it with utmost professionalism, but also know how to have a good time at it. Thanks guys for making the whole thing happen.
I'm curious about the rigging of the various cameras mounted inside and and out...
How was this done? What type of cameras? How long did it take to get ready for this filming? What went into the planning with the program producers? And what about the intercom set up? Was that seperate from the pilots so they weren't distracted from flying when the "actors" were freaken out at times?
Just curious about the behind the scenes stuff.
Steve