History Channel Remote Control

Was that my imagination, or did they show a ducted fan several times during the segment on turbine jets??

Skylane42,

Probably just went by MSRP's.

I liked the $15,000,000.00 all solar powered R/C plane. --

Jim L.

Yep, the same Mig 15 over and over. It's obvious the people involved in making it know nothing about the hobby. To an outsider, the cost is a big surprise, so that's going to get attention. Same with miniature jets. As technical as they got with the flashmatic, they never described any detail of the working of the planes, or even showed a servo or receiver. They also said something about multi-channel becoming possible with FM radios in the 60's.

My only beef is that somewhere along the line, someone said the jet pilots are the best of the best. All these types of shows now repeat that over and over. While I'd say they are in general above average, I've seen many that make me find a good roof to stand under. (trolling license applied for).

Yeah, that was a ducted fan. They missed the best part of a turbine; winding up and taking off. They demonstrated that with a ducted fan!

If you extrapolate such goofs to other shows of the History Channel it makes you wonder how accurate history is being depicted in other ways. My pet peeve is them showing telegraphers or radio operators pounding out Morse code using an index finger. Never done that way. Operators always grasp the key between thumb and middle finger. The index finger rests on the top of the key. Not a big deal, except they always use an extreme close-up to show their ignorance. I also get a laugh out of the grainy, black and white, scratched, spotted, fast motion, "film" from the Civil War. Obviously recreated for visual effect, but how many TV viewers today realize that motion picture film was not invented until well after the war?

Another way the demands of an "info-tainment" viewing public and producers blur the reality of history. Who wants to look at a boring photograph? No way to depict a chase scene...

Tom

There's plenty where that came from. In a program in their "barbarians series" they where talking of the vikings as being nothing but ravenging hordes doing nothing but pillaging and robbing and then towards the end of the viking ages when many vikings turned to cristianity they turned into peacful farmers. Then in the very next hour (?!) there was another program who again told of the vikings but this time it was told in a whole other light (and more historically accurate I would say) that they started out as farmers and seatraders who occationally went on raids and waged wars. So I would say that history channel tries just as hard as any other channel to tweak everything into a viewer catching mush of reality and fiction. One just has to learn to sift through to the real facts.

I'm all with you there :) Even though there are as many way to grasp a cw-key as there are operators, using the index finger alone is by far the least accurate way.

Exactly, one can only hope that watching history channel may make someone interested enough in the subject depicted to actually go out and find things out for themselves (like reading a book or visiting a model airfield) and not just get it fed from "the tube"

Reading a book? Yea, good idea. At least it's a little more accurate than the Internet. :-)

"When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed it. Probably, they gathered together one evening, slapped each other on the back and said, "Hey, good job.".

"I bet when they weren't fighting, Vikings with horn helmets had to stick potatoes on the ends of the horns, so as to avoid eye-pokings to fellow Vikings and lady Vikings."

Bob

Well, as long as we're correcting history, the Vikings didn't wear horned helms. They more resembled a dunce cap.

Picture on the front of this page is typical

Oh yeah, that is my pet peeve with viking depictions.

The only time and place horned helmets where found was in the bronze age and then only as ceremonial headdress of shamans and tribal lords.

But.. but... but.. what about the Minnisota Vikings...

Being a vikes fan myself I am forced to live with that logo :-P Atleast the logo sports some nice braids, which was not all that uncommon since hair does not grow less when at sea for a long time and shears might not be available for cutting the hair. I guess we will just have to live with the fact that football is a sport of fantasies and that the Washington Redskins have slightly less native americans playing for them then the name suggests just as real vikings did have far less horns then the vikings logo suggests :)

Tell that to John Handy. He wrote the jokes, not me.

Bob