Classic British Flight Sim

Here's a good one. In the late 70's, 77/78 I think, I spent a day at Ringway armed with a cassette recorder. From the piers and a position at the end of the runway I recorded various aircraft starting up, taxiing and taking off. This included amongst too many to mention, B707, Super VC10 and a Comet. For the latter we were right underneath the flightpath as it took off. All in all a wonderful day and a fabulous collection of din! The recordings were so good that I could play the tape at full volume from my bedroom window and the next door neighbour would come running out to see what was flying over!

I still have the cassette but sadly, the recording has long been recorded over. I read somewhere that it is possible to retrieve such material. Am I right or talking bolloc*s? I would love to get it back. The VC10 for example was recorded from spool up to taxiing out to the runway from the internetional pier and it was deafening! What memories!

I believe magnetic tape recovery is usually limited to deterioration, and I'm not sure if anything can be done if you've recorded over them. Once the tape has been magnetised with a new recording all of the original data is immediately lost to the best of my knowledge.

That has been my understanding too Chris. Be great if it could be recovered but I wouldn't hold much hope :-(

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Sadly true. The only way possible is with 'wiped' tapes - a subtle difference from recorded over, and even then the SNR is so weak that lots of processing is required to get anything meaningful out of previous (if any) recordings cross-talk - and even from other transferances (The biggest problem with tape if not stored correctly).

The other issue is that even if it were possible, the sounds would be useless for 'realism' - as the dynamic range is not large enough to be recognisably cleaned up like voices or music for instance. There would be no 'power' in the sound. Pity. :-(

A pity indeed. There were some classics on that tape - one and a half sides of a c90. It was also one of the last times I spent a full day on the terraces of any airport! By the way, most will have seen the film Bullitt. How good were the scenes involving the 707 when Steve McQueen was legging it across the runways? The noise was fabulous!

Hi Paul

That is a real shame - I can empathize with you there, as many years ago I used stick a microphone out my bedroom window to record the planes, especially Andovers, on approach to RAF Benson, four miles away. I still have those sounds of Rolls Royce Darts on tape but they are by no means brilliant quality.

As I now have bought DVD's and audio CD's with these sounds on them, my recordings are not so important, but that is no real consolation to something you have achieved yourself, like photography. Especially as you say yours were good! The trouble is, when you're young you don't usually think about keeping these things for nostalgia.

Then of course I moved on to camcorders, but before then, video cameras (as they were known) would have been FAR too expensive!!

The thought of having planes which flew over my house everyday on video!!!... with sound!!!......was just a distant, magical dream...Oh how things change.... :think: