Shoreham to Barcelona (Sabadell)

[peterh337]

http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/bar ... index.html

This article describes a straightforward IFR (airways) trip from Shoreham (EGKA) in the UK to Barcelona (Sabadell, LELL) in Spain, and back 2 days later.

[XX]

Peter

Another interesting and useful write up - thank you. Especially the bit about the handling company taking you to/picking you up from a central hotel. We paid 40 euros each way from Sabadell into the City; the first driver lost his way numerous times and then tried to charge us more (unsuccessfully, 40 euros is the going rate).

I'm surprised you are happy with such steep descents in the TB? My co-owner who has an IR flew IFR to Perpignan and then I flew VFR along the coast, avoiding the sharp pointy bits, which worked fine.

Great city, must go back some time!

[peterh337]

The rate of descent was only about 700fpm, and shock cooling was managed easily enough. Also I am sure shock cooling is not an issue if the CHT is low enough to start with; say 350F or below.

The return flight was flight planned via the Perpignan route too but as I described in the writeup Barcelona ATC did not play ball, sending me off in the opposite direction which I took as a crude hint that they wanted me to sod off to France the same way I came down. Spanish ATC at big airports like El-Prat (LEBL) is at best barely coping with any traffic, on their €200k+ salaries and their English language proficiency is just the stock phrases, so no point in getting into a discussion. Obviously if I did not have a suitable performance aircraft and oxygen then I would have had to say "unable to comply due to fuel; I filed a departure to the east" and hope their ELP stretches to that

The 100ALAS handling outfit was amazing. Really nice people. But they spoke almost no English, so a Spanish friend called them for me, and I booked the pickup 2 days later by email.

[stevelup]

Great report - as they always are. Thanks!

[peterh337]

Did this
https://vimeo.com/47290448
as a "proof of concept" where a long movie (4+ hrs) is speeded up 16x enroute, while running a "correct time" counter in the corner.

On a dual-core Intel it took about a week to render, with the original ~30GB ex-camera material taking ~25hrs to render with the time counter. The first speed drop (4x - the biggest that Vegas allows) took another 25hrs (Vegas takes a long time to apparently interpolate the frames, but the result is quite good) and the next ones were quicker because the source material was down to < 1hr then.

The basic image quality is good, despite the multiple renders and is way above most of the webcam type stuff people are playing with.

I didn't think of doing the sound track. I have an in-headset mike for that, with a little "pro" preamp, and it works well. But really for a totally hands-off job I need a headset jack plug to camcorder converter cable. I wonder if anybody makes one off the shelf that actually works?

[SteveN]

Great idea Peter and superb video.

[M609]

Did this
https://vimeo.com/47290448
as a "proof of concept" where a long movie (4+ hrs) is speeded up 16x enroute, while running a "correct time" counter in the corner.

On a dual-core Intel it took about a week to render, with the original ~30GB ex-camera material taking ~25hrs to render with the time counter. The first speed drop (4x - the biggest that Vegas allows) took another 25hrs

I tried something smilar (-the counter) about a month ago. I used the GoPro HD with suction mount on the wing close to the strut (C172SP)

https://vimeo.com/45216020

I edit on a 8 core Mac Pro using Final Cut Pro, used less than an hour to do the speed change bit.

The plan was to do both legs of the flight......but when you forget to turn the cam off for the 2 hour coffee/tale telling break with the colleauges in the twr.....not much life in the GoPro when you get back

[peterh337]

That looks good. You had the benefit of an externally mounted camera and great visibility.

However I cannot see the time counter. 1hr rendering time for what original movie length and what original frame size?

I reckon an I7 processor would reduce the 25hrs to about 1/2 of that. I tried the render on a single core (same speed; 3GHz) and it was going for ~60hrs.

I once thought about getting a high end "bullet camera" (Sony were doing one for about £1500) and mounting it on the outside of the cockpit, via a clever bracket which is actually attached on the inside of the LH window with suction cups and passes through the door seal. But I could not find anybody who stocked that camera and didn't bother to pursue it. The G10 quality is anyway way above anything like that, although the window material does reduce it a bit. The anti-vib mount I used is this
http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/bar ... le0001.jpg

[M609]

(-the counter)

No counter, but will try to get something like that next time.

The GoPro stores files in HD (1080p), so the speeded up bit was on three clips,combined length of the bits sped to 20x was aprrox 1:10. In final cut pro you do the speeding up bit one clip at the time. (They way I did it anyway, it´s A LOT I don´t know about FCP)

I have done some trials with both my GoPro and my Drift HD170 cameras mounted on the old Army Cub I have shares in....vibrates a lot, even with camera mounted inside.

https://vimeo.com/25843470 Yes......clean the windshield, I know.....

Outside you get wind induced vibration too on the GoPro if you use a mount that is too long. The best result I got was actually with the HD170 taped to where the upright meets the main wing struts. It startet raining that day, so no much to show for it. Not much vibration though.

[peterh337]

So you reckon ~ 1hr original material took ~1hr to render?

According to google, your PC should have the Intel Xeon W3565 CPU.

[stevelup]

That's pretty normal for FCP on a decent Mac Pro. It doesn't just use the CPU for rendering, it also uses the GPU.

Simple render jobs happen way faster than real time - so if you're just editing a bunch of clips together with simple transitions, you'll get a finished render out in sub ten minutes per hour.

[peterh337]

One issue may be that I never found out what intermediate format is totally lossless and would also produce fast rendering - at a cost of generating massive files. Vegas offers many options.

[stevelup]

Try HuffYUV

[M609]

So you reckon ~ 1hr original material took ~1hr to render

More or less, yes

The Mac Pro with FCP is a very good match. I used to have to rely on my laptop (A very basic 09 13" Macbook Pro) ......that required patience

[M609]

I tried another experiment, used the GoPro to take stills with 2 second interval. Used Quicktime Pro to create the video file, and edited in FCP.

Might try same on a flight, and see what result that gives.

https://vimeo.com/48041617