Hi Curt,
Thanks for the review and the pics.
Isn't sharing those sorts of experiences what the flying (sim or reality)
is about? It's great hearing about others experiences and even better with
pics
Cheers
Dene
From: "Curtis L. Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
To: FlightGear developers discussions
<flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: [Flightgear-devel] OT: Saturday night movie review
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:06:31 -0600
I suspect that most of you probably don't care too much about my life
story, but it's Saturday night, things are slow, I just got back from
seeing "End of the Spear", so it's movie review and story time.
If anyone wants to know where my love of aviation comes from go see this
movie. I've never flown in a cub myself, but as a kid I've flown to
similar remote regions of the amazon jungle in a Helio Super Courier both
wheeled and floated, and once even in a WWII vintage Catalina. Even though
I've lived in the USA for many years now, I still have some jungle blood
pumping through my veins. If you want to see some great Piper Super Cub
footage, and some pretty intense bush flying, it's there in the movie.
These guys were doing this back in the 50's with no gps, probably few or no
navaids, and flying over hundreds of miles of raw jungle where if you went
down, you literally would never be found. The movie is about missionaries
and does have some religious undertones, but it doesn't get in your face
about it. They don't stop the movie in the middle and pass around an
offering plate or anything like that. :-) It tries to be an inspirational
story about halting endless cycles of violence and finding ways for peace
to emerge -- something this world could use just a bit more of if you ask
me. The movie is a true story, and from what I know and what I've heard,
and based on what I've seen in my own life, it does a pretty good job of
being right on.
The movie takes place in Ecuador. I was born in Peru, one country south of
there, but the trees, the animals, the rivers, the clouds, the weather, the
terrain, the houses, the people ... are all very similar between Ecuador
and Peru, and the movie does an excellent job of capturing an authentic
view of all of these things. In 1999 I was able to travel back to Peru for
a 2 week visit with my wife and brother and parents. As part of that, my
wife and I were able to take a small float plane (another helio courier)
way up to the Alta-Maranon in Northern Peru and spend the night in a
community that was at least as remote as the one in the movie. On that
same trip we got to visit the small village where my crazy parents were
living when I celebrated my first birthday. We got to run up and down the
maranon river in a speed boat--the same river my dad used to run up and
down back in the day. I remember once when I was about 5 we were heading
up some pretty significant rapids in his boat and had a prop strike halfway
up and broke the shear pin (which is what attaches the prop to the drive
shaft.) That was the day I learned my dad could change a shear pin faster
than a nascar pit crew can change a tire ... well once he dug the
replacement out of the jar holding all his spare nuts and bolts...
Picture time:
Here's a shot out of the front window of a Helio. The pilot was attempting
to sneak us under the cloud layer and over the oncoming ridge ... however
as you can see if you look closely, there are places where the clouds
extend below the ridge. We snuck through ok, whew! That wasn't the only
tight spot we got ourselves in on that trip...
http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/tmp/ridge.jpg
Here's a picture of me when I was a geeky kid, probably about 12 years old.
It shows some uncanny parallels to the movie. Come to think of it, I
even had a pet bird similar to the one in the movie:
http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/tmp/plane-curt.jpg
So there you go. I'm a pretty odd mix of different cultures and background,
not really feeling 100% at home anywhere. I'm a white guy who looks very
out of place in the jungle, but a jungle boy who feels very out of place in
frozen Minnesota ... fondly remembering the days of my youth when I
couldn't have told you the last time I put on a pair of shoes.
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson http://www.flightgear.org/~curt
HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org
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