Charlie Victor Romeo – crash recorder dramatizations of Pilot & crew’s last words

In 1999 a novel play was created dramatizing the last minutes of airplane flights which resulted in a crash.  This has now been re-imagined as a 3D movie.  I’m not sure why you would want 3D for this, as it’s not exactly a lush cinematic event, but perhaps it helps sell DVDs.  As a pilot myself, there is a particular fascination reviewing the events and things that were said in the cockpit prior to a disaster.  We like to hope that WE wouldn’t have made the key decisions which lead to a bad result, but in the heat of the moment, would we or not?

Charlie Victor Romeo Theatrical Poster

The movie is called “Charlie Victor Romeo” because CVT is the industry acronym for the famous “black box”, or “Cockpit Voice Recorder” – the source for the dialog re-enacted by the actors.

This has also been used as material for “Cockpit Resource Management” training which airline pilots must periodically undergo.  But even to a lay person who doesn’t necessarily understand all of the pilot jargon, it’s still a morbidly fascinating look at what happened and why.

This is now in the Netflix database, but it not available for streaming at the date of this writing.  The film is currently screening in New York and Los Angeles.

This is probably not a movie for everybody, but if you find it hard to look away from a train wreck, or car crash on the freeway, this might be right up your alley!

Here is an official trailer:

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3D printer uses metal – prints a working gun!

Ok, so the fact that they chose to print a gun as opposed to some other useful tool is probably mainly for shock effect and media appeal.  Still, the fact that these guys are able to print high-tolerance metal parts is amazing!  Click Here for the article.

3D printers are becoming more commonplace, but most of them use plastic as a medium and create output using layers of melted plastic (stereo lithography). Below is a MakerBot 3d printer.

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This cool gadget can be yours for a paltry $2,899! 

As you might expect, a device that produces metal parts is a LOT more expensive.  Services like Solid Concepts can be very useful, giving you the ability to print on much more expensive gear, using more exotic materials for one-off manufacturing, prototyping, or even replacing impossible to procure parts on an existing machine!  These folks actually have a firearm manufacturing license, so if you have a gun with a broken but impossible to find part, they can probably make it for you quite easily.

 

Links to my other stuff

One reader suggested that I post links to Facebook, LinkedIn and so forth.  So, I created a “links” widget on the right hand side (scroll way down).  This has links to other sites on the web that I have something to do with.  Enjoy!