Omaka P-40's Presentation Via Zoom

[Dave Homewood]

John Saunders has let me know that he, Mike Nicholls and Dave McDonald are presenting an evening chat about the John Smith P-40's NZ3043 "Bess" and NZ3220 "Gloria Lyons" to the members of the Omaka AHC and the local RAeS at 7pm on Wednesday 14th of October. He has offered to stream it on Zoom for us, and naturally I have jumped at the chance as this sounds great.

TO REGISTER: If you'd like to view this on Zoom please email me to register at [e-mail] before 10.00pm on Tuesday the 13th of October. When you register you'll be supplied the Zoom link via email.

[rayo]

hi Dave
will a copy be available on this forum after the event?

[Dave Homewood]

I plan to record it. So long as the speakers are happy I will put it onto YouTube.

[rayo]

Great thanks a lot

[Dave Homewood]

Well the best laid plans of mice and men tend to get scuttled by Murphy's Law.

John Saunders, Phil Treweek and I tested out the Zoom set-up last night and it was perfectly fine, and again today John and I tested it from in the actual hangar and again it worked perfectly. But come 7.00pm and the actual presentation sadly the broadcast started off with really poor sound where we could not hear what was being said, and then the picture froze, and then the connection dropped altogether. So those of us on Zoom did not get to see and hear the live presentation after all.

Phil and I improvised for the Zoom viewers by screening the same video that John was to screen for the audience there, as it was on YouTube luckily. You can watch it here:


And then Phil had the wonderful idea to ask Brendon Deere, who was one of the viewers, to say a few words about his Mustang project, so that was brilliant and made the whole thing worth it for us on the Zoom chat.

But sadly there is no Zoom recording of the event I'm afraid. I hope it went more smoothly in the hangar where John, Mike and Dave were presenting to around 80 people.

[ErrolC]

Thanks for your efforts everyone.

[baronbeeza]

Oct 14, 2020 19:40:34 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Well the best laid plans of mice and men tend to get scuttled by Murphy's Law.



But sadly there is no Zoom recording of the event I'm afraid. I hope it went more smoothly in the hangar where John, Mike and Dave were presenting to around 80 people.

Am I correct in assuming the event was filmed anyway. It seems that it was the live feed that was the issue.

I was hoping to view in my own time, a little later on.

[Dave Homewood]

It was apparently filmed as we asked for this as a back up, but just waiting to see if we can get permission to add it to YouTube.

It was not just the live feed, John's computer crapped out, so the live event also lost all the carefully planned PowerPoint presentations too, sadly.

[harvard1041]

Hi All - yes - a real pitty last night with, I think, my computer maxing out in RAM with a Zoom feed and feeding a projector running simulateously....had worked fine in our dry run...but not on the day.

We managed to talk our way thru it anyway, and with three P-40s in the hangar, I think we had a reasonable evening...but a shame.

I'll upload the talk on to YouTube today (it is our Powerpoint Presentation with no chat however)...and while it was all videod at the time, there is a lot of film of us trying to get the bloody computer to work !?!

Cheers
Hvd1041

PS - here's the Youtube link here - four videos - hope they are of interest

www.youtube.com/user/lisajackson99

[nuuumannn]

I took the night off work so I could go to this and by the sounds of things from the Zoom end, a good decision. It was in fact, despite the AV issues, really enjoyable. The first intimation of the troubles ahead was Des Ashton being corralled to find a screen! John and Mike made the best of the situation by continuing with their talking points and it was very interesting to hear about the aircraft present and the Smith family's efforts in acquiring so much when they did, much of which was carted from around the country back to Mapua on a trailer attached to a Morris Minor!

I enjoyed Mike's presentation on the differences between the P-40E and 'N models and caught up with Mike after the presentation to go into this in more depth. Fascinating stuff. The 'N was to embody modifications to save money, weight, to introduce non-strategic materials into its construction and to improve the type's performance. It achieved the first and third of these! One odd thing the manufacturers did was to remove the vacuum driven instrumentation, such as the DG and AH, so the 'N pilots couldn't fly in IMC, which, as Mike mentioned led to a specific incident where P-40s were scattered all over the place after flying into cloud whilst escorting B-24s on a raid. He also highlighted the fact that the 'E model was constructed neatly and conformed to engineering norms using skilled labour, whereas the 'N was built by unskilled labour who frequently ignored those norms! All very enlightening.

Overall it was informative and enjoyable and after the presentation a few die hards, such as myself stayed in the hangar to ask questions and look at the aircraft, whilst the rest went to the AHC for a cuppa and warmth - it was well attended with a full house. All-in-all, worth driving to Blenheim for.

Thanks John, Mike, Dave and the AHC for putting it on.

[nuuumannn]

A few pictures. NZ3043.

NZ3043 ii

NZ3043

NZ3043 i

NZ3220.

NZ3220 i

NZ3220 Allison

NZ3220

[Dave Homewood]

Great stuff Grant. I am glad the evening went well down there.

[ZacYates]

Thanks for the brief and photos, Grant!

Oct 15, 2020 8:06:41 GMT 12 harvard1041 said:

PS - here's the Youtube link here - four videos - hope they are of interest

www.youtube.com/user/lisajackson99

Thanks very much John, I enjoyed those a lot.