California Flyboys
In this 26 minute digital video documentary, a bunch of ordinary L.A. guys regularly find bliss, terror and sometimes zen-like calm by throwing radio-controlled gliders (costing between $150 and $1500) off a cliff near Malibu, and (sometimes) flying them back to safety. Most have been flying for years - one is a 747-400 pilot for United - and another makes his first, terrifying flight today.
This hill overlooking the Pacific has some of the best year-round winds and lift for slope soaring of any place in the United States. Everything from simple Styrofoam flying wings to twelve-foot wingspan high performance machines fly there together most days of the week, and it’s usually the same bunch of perpetrators, flying, landing, crashing, climbing down the hill to rescue their airplanes, and generally having the best time they could imagine.
The video includes aerial footage taken by a tiny video camera installed in a Wanderer by electrical engineer Jim Breese, along with a transmitter that sent the signal live to the ground on a 2.4 gigaherz transmitter, where a video recorder put it on tape.
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THE GREAT CHICAGO CONSPIRACY CIRCUS