Archive for December 4th, 2020

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 249

Friday, December 4th, 2020

There’s a guy on the ‘Tube, “Missionary Bush Pilot“. For some reason, I find his videos oddly compelling. Also, this is RoadRich bait.

“Delivering the Kodiak Airplane for Maintenance in Papua New Guinea”. This one is just slightly over coffee break size.

Bonus, slightly longer: “Solo International Flight over the Ocean to Australia in a Single Engine Small Airplane”.

This reminds me a little of a semi-awful show that used to air on Quest. I’m blanking on the name of it at the moment, but it involved ferry pilots. The actual flying parts of that show were fine: what I hated about it was the manufactured “characters” and imposed drama. The nice thing about this channel is that Chris seems to be flying alone, so there’s no interpersonal drama.

Posted in Planes | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 4, 2020.

Friday, December 4th, 2020

Warren Berlinger, prolific TV and movie actor.

He was in a lot of stuff: “Cannonball Run”, multiple appearances on “Happy Days”, “The Shaggy D.A.”, “Operation Petticoat”, and the list goes on.

Hamish MacInnes, mountain climber. I note this for two reasons:

1) Not making fun of his name, but if “Hamish MacInnes” isn’t the most Scottish name imaginable, it’s in the top ten.

2) Not only was he a climber, he was also one of the pioneers of mountain rescue:

As inventive as he was adventurous, Mr. MacInnes built a car from scratch when he was 17. He later used radar to search for bodies in the snow and, in 1961, founded the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team. He also trained dogs to help search for avalanche victims. His friends called him “the fox of Glencoe” for his cunning in finding lost climbers.
Perhaps his most famous invention was the first all-steel ice ax. It was a significant improvement on the wooden-handled ax, which snapped under pressure.
He also developed a foldable lightweight mountain rescue stretcher that is still in use today and an avalanche information service. His “International Mountain Rescue Handbook” (1972) became the go-to manual for rescue teams all over the world.
All told, his inventions and services saved countless lives.
“No one man has done more to help put in place the network of emergency response efforts designed to keep climbers from harm’s way,” The Scotsman newspaper wrote after Mr. MacInnes’s death.

Scary story:

When he was 84, he was found unconscious in front of his house. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was deemed demented and held against his will for 15 months. During that time, he was sedated and put in a straitjacket, his weight plummeted, and his memory vanished. He made several attempts to escape; at one point he scaled the outside wall of the hospital, only to end up on the roof with nowhere to go.
Doctors eventually discovered that he had been suffering from a chronic urinary tract infection that produced dementia-like symptoms.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, TV | Comments Closed