1960's Disney soaring movie

[MHende6388]

Anyone remember the name of the 30 or 40 year-old Disney with the young man who
studied birds of prey and took up soaring in a Schweizer 2-32?

Is it available from some vintage video source?

Michael

[Dan Armstrong]

If I am right, it was the Boy Who Flew With Condors, filmed here in the
Tehachapi, California area. Fred Harris, who ran the glider operation
here, was the instructor in the film. Chris Jury was the male soaring
pilot. He is now deceased. Margaret Birsner was the female soaring pilot.
She is living in the New York City area. Her brother, John, is a good
friend of mine. John and Margaret and Chris all learned to fly gliders here.
There is a section of Tehachapi called Jury Road, named after the Jury
family. John Birsner is a gynecologist in Lancaster, California.

Contact me at danar...@aol.com and I check a few sources about getting a
copy.

By the way, the California Condors (after whom the film was named) went, as
you are probably aware, nearly extinct. The Condor Breeding program has
brought them back to the Tehachapi Valley and my husband has soared with
them.

We were able to see Fred and Goldie Harris a few years back when we all got
together and watched the show again (it was a Disney show). It is still
terrific. Fred passed away not too long after our viewing. Goldie died in
Bakersfield in the last month.

That's the scoop as I know it. Hope it was helpful!

Janice Armstrong
MHende6388 <mhend...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010505211049...@ng-mq1.aol.com...

[Douglas Bell]

Dan already provided most of the details. The only thing I can add was that
it was released in 1967. How do I remember? That was also the year the
National Geographic had a very good article on Soaring. It was also the
year I got a high school graduation present of an introductory lesson. Been
flying sailplanes ever since.

BTW. I'd sure like to get a copy of the film (video) if anyone can come up
with a source.

Doug

[Quietpilot]

Hmmmm, seems to me there was a 1-26 used in the film as well? According to
local legend, it was #032, which I covered the wings on two years ago.

Can anyone confirm the 1-26 appearance?

Thanks

MG
San Diego

[mike maskell]

The title is as described, "The boy who flew with the condors". It showed
up here on the Family Channel a few years ago and I was able to tape it.
Quite good even today. It was what turned me onto soaring.

Mike
"Quietpilot" <quiet...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010506015839...@ng-xa1.aol.com...

[BTIZ]

#032 has had a very interesting life... wouldn't you say??

"Quietpilot" <quiet...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010506015839...@ng-xa1.aol.com...

[Hannes Linke]

MHende6388 wrote:

The name of that movie was: The Boy who flew with the Condors.

Hannes Linke

[Catherine Conway]

I have a copy of "the Boy who flew with Condors". I also have Dawn Flight - anyone
remember that one?

-Cath

[fannum]

On Wed, 09 May 2001 16:42:48 +0930, Catherine Conway
<con...@agile.com.au> wrote:

>I have a copy of "the Boy who flew with Condors". I also have Dawn Flight - anyone
>remember that one?

Oh yes. Curiously, there was a real burst in interest when ad agencies
discovered gliders, like the Jack Lambie/1-26 Camel ad, both TV and
print, and Seagrams with Larry Bell's flat top LK. Created some glider
port traffic. Then later Steve McQueen's Thomas Crown Affair caused a
brief blip.

Cheers, Bob

[Vincent]

Not to mention the Colditz Cock - oh! but then I just did.

Vince

[bef...@gmail.com]

Hi everybody

I discovered the movie on youtube this week
This is the reason why I show up so late in this group

Very passionating
I am in France and learning soaring (condor simulator for the moment)

Adolfo

[Scott Williams]

Available from "shop Disney" for about $25

[mfp...@gmail.com]

It's available from Cumulus Soaring. That's where I got my copy. I also picked up Dawn Flight at the Little Rock Convention from them.

Mark

[John Foster]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 3:55:18 PM UTC-6, mfp...@gmail.com wrote:
> It's available from Cumulus Soaring. That's where I got my copy. I also picked up Dawn Flight at the Little Rock Convention from them.
>
> Mark

Is this the movie? Free on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqHXiaMhSIo

[bef...@gmail.com]

Yes it is
Do you know if quality of DVD is better than the one of YouTube ?

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 24 Apr 2020 02:12:14 -0700, befut8 wrote:

> Yes it is Do you know if quality of DVD is better than the one of
> YouTube ?

Seems likely, at least right now, because I've heard that YouTube is
using reduced bandwidth during the COVID lock-down to avoid network
congestion, and of course this reduces image sharpness. In any case this
film looks as if it was made for TV, back in the day when the NTSC
standard was a thing, with only 525 scan lines, which may mean that the
master copy's resolution was quite low. Would it have been shot on video
tape or film?

I watched it last night, found it was unwatchable in full-screen mode on
my laptop (1600 x 900 screen), so watched it as the small image. Nice
movie. All I could fault was the rapid weather switches during the Gold
flight and the rather unlikely auto-tow behind the old-timer's jalopy:
the rope looked a bit short!

Bit of a navigational overshoot though - Google Earth says he went 30
miles too far - and, from driving 395 to Lee Vining from Bishop I seem to
remember some fairly fairly unlandable country along the way.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[kinsell]

The YouTube version is only 240P, so the DVD would almost certainly be
better.

[moshe....@gmail.com]

Youtube adjusts the resolution automatically to fit your bandwidth (not just your last-mile bandwidth, but the congestion all along the way from YT's servers to you). I've just now tried this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqHXiaMhSIo
and it auto-plays for me at 240p. But I can download it (however slowly) for later off-line playing (using an add-on to Firefox), supposedly at 360p - the saved file is actually 384x288, about 123 megabytes. (This add-on, Youtube Downloader Lite, also offers higher resolutions for the download, but they are color-coded in the listing, which seems to mean they are sent to some server for reprocessing, which is very slow if it works at all, so I use the gray one at the top of the list.)

But yeah the video tech in the 60's wasn't what we're used to now. Cheap phones and drones now give you "HD" resolution (excessive IMO). A couple of years ago I bought the DVD version of The Sunship Game (from the 1969 (?) nats) and was rather disappointed with the video quality. To my taste, true DVD ("SD") resolution is about right. Unless you sit too close to your large TV.

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 24 Apr 2020 07:01:42 -0700, moshe.braner wrote:

> A couple of years ago I bought the DVD version of The Sunship Game (from
> the 1969 (?) nats) and was rather disappointed with the video quality.
> To my taste, true DVD ("SD") resolution is about right. Unless you sit
> too close to your large TV.
>

Same here - the download I got was fairly unwatchable, so a few years
later I bought the DVD from Cumulus - that's much better quality.

[bef...@gmail.com]

thanks, I purchased the dvd
Also I discovered The Sunship Game !

Adolfo

[kinsell]

I think you're overestimating the quality you can get from YT. They can
and do adjust resolution downward to conserve bandwidth sometimes, but
this video is stored a 240P, which sets a real boundary on how good it
will ever look.

You can always upscale the resolution to fill a HD screen, but it
doesn't add any detail that wasn't in the 240P version. The DVD is
going to look better than anything from YT.

-Dave

[John DeRosa OHM Ω http://aviation.derosaweb.net]

Ahhhh...Dawn Flight.

This is without a doubt the best flying of two gliders chasing each other that I have ever seen. The flight low across the lake and then between the trees is something to behold. Incredible.

For a taste see this *UBER* bad version of just the chase sequences.

https://youtu.be/A0ptkl_0-xc.

[mfp...@gmail.com]

I bought the 'Directors Cut' (my term) of Dawn Flight at the SSA Convention in Little Rock. It also contains a section where the director and Dennis Ahrndt discuss the movie and how some of the flying sequences were done.

The DVDs of both DF and BWFWTC are acceptable, considering the older formats and film to DVD conversion.

In Sunship Game, one of my favorite scenes is where George Moffat is taking a hand saw to the wings of his Cirrus.

Mark