On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:36:39 -0800 (PST), wrote:

Yeah, those animations are pretty to watch but get very confusing when they
start manuevering hard and the airplane goes off in a different direction
to what you might expect.

Good point, there's really no telling whether the animators got it
right or just wanted it to look really amazing and cool. If the pilot
objected they didn't air his objections. The show isn't into that kind
of analysis. It's more of a "look at THIS!!" kinda thing.

I enjoy the show, but it's occasionally obvious that the writers don't have an
aviation background. You get subtle misuses of terminology, sometimes. I
suspect that the on-camera interviewees have no say in how the rest of the show
is presented.

I think they sometimes "compress" maneuvers; pack them into a tighter geographic
area to increase the dramatic effect. What bugs me more is that A) They
sometimes get the physical shapes of the aircraft wrong, and B) They get the
national markings wrong on the aircraft.

The worst cases of A) have been the depiction of WWI aircraft, especially SPADs.
The landing gear seems to flip around...sometimes the forward legs are vertical
and the aft are slanted, and other times it's the other way around.

For B), they especially seem to lose track of where the US national insignia go.
Sometimes, you see the star-and-bar on the upper surfaces of BOTH wings, other
times it's on both the upper and lower surfaces of the left wing only. They
also often get the proportions wrong. I've seen problems with other country's
aircraft, too, especially German planes.

While the above make me grind my teeth a bit when it happens, I do like the
program. It's interesting to compare the technological sophistication of the
two-hour pilot (first aired about 2-3 years ago) vs. the shows they're doing
now.

Ron Wanttaja