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Flying over Amboseli One of the great joys of living in this beautiful country is the relative freedom of the skies for aviators (and birds, of course). Join me in a flip over Amboseli. Back in 2004, when Martyn Colbeck and Cynthia were filming 'Echo 3', Martyn asked me do so some flying for the film. He asked if they could give me something for my time, and I said, no, just cut me a DVD of some of the shots. Well, he did much more than that: he got the producing company, Mike Birkhead Associates, to edit this lovely little montage. They even added the aerial theme music from the film Out of Africa. I'm hugely grateful to Martyn and Mike: I'm now some kind of aviation hero to my kids and grandkids. The sequence, as Colin Davies, owner of Hotel-Zulu, the Cessna 206, put it, "brought tears to the eyes" of a group of crusty Kenya bush pilots at dinner one night at his house. Enjoy the flight! If you have a fast Internet connection, just wait for the automatic video download, until it shows up below. Depending on your Internet connection speed, this can take a few seconds, minutes, or hours. Expect about 10 seconds over a 16 Mbit/s connection, 2.5 minutes over a 1 Mbit/s connection, something like an hour over a fast modem or two hours over a slow one. Once the movie plays, you can click into it once, then adjust the volume or right-click and select Zoom, Full screen or other options. You can also play the video in an external player. If you have a slow Internet connection or don't see the video player below after the expected time, you can right-click on this link and elect to save the target. Once downloaded, simply double-click on the file. Some technical details from Hans-Georg Michna: The average data rate is 492 kBit/s, but it is a variable bit rate (VBR). The original DVD contains a tad over 300 MB, which is too big for the web site, but I could reformat and recompress it to the ubiquitous WMV (Windows Media Video) format, using Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder. The result is this 18 MB file here, whose video and sound quality comes close to the DVD at this much smaller file size. Enjoy!
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Wonderful Video
Mon, 2008-07-07 09:51 by Kenya Holidays
Harvey the video footage with the music you chose to accompany it is wonderful and so atmospheric. I took the liberty of downloading it from Google Video and adding it to our Kenya Blog (www.KenyaHolidays4u.co.uk/blog) with a link back to you. I hope that's ok but I wanted our potential clients to get a feel for what a wonderful travel destination Kenya is.
I look forward to seeing more.
No problem with spreading the news...
Fri, 2008-07-11 15:43 by hcroze
...even though there's a benign commercial spin to it. But how else are we to keep those tourist dollars flowing into Kenya? And there's the rub: how to make certain that the dollars flow down eventually to the landowners who need to have their 'opportunity costs' of allowing passage to wildlife met by someone. Livestock husbandry of the Maasai traditional sort and rainfed agriculture nibbling away at the edges of the ecosystem don't quite cut the economic fat. At the moment a few of us local NGOs are working hard to make sure that rapacious tour companies and eco-unfriendly hoteliers don't have the buck stop there, as it were. But we are quite small in a large complex ecosystem that is beleaguered with social, political and economic problems that would stretch the creativity and dedication of a government, were it interested, let along a small elephant-focussed NGO. But we can make noise, draw attention, and divert some donor funding to helping the community meet the challenges of policy neglect typical of rural pastoral areas. My, but I do carry on...
Anyway, do carry on. So far we have not been hauled into court for using the OOA flying music.
Best regards, Harvey
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HC
Loved it!
Sun, 2008-03-23 08:49 by Lesley
What an amazing place. No wonder the elephants love Amboseli. Thanks for taking us up up up and away.
Awesome!
Fri, 2008-02-29 22:53 by Pete666
Harvey
Just watched The video and loved it.
Pete
Nolus Illegitemi Carborundum
If you've got it a TRUCK bought it
Harvey flying
Fri, 2008-02-29 21:43 by Donna
Such a poetic piece. No wonder the the old bush pilots teared up. The part I love most was the Echo sequence. The EBs were joyous and flippy trunked. Beautiful.
Flying over Amboseli
Fri, 2008-02-29 17:27 by niall anderson
Breath-taking! Thank you so much for uploading this, Harvey.
Beautiful flight
Thu, 2008-02-28 22:01 by Jan
Asante Sana! It was marvelous taking this flight with you. I haven't even been home a week from Kenya and it makes me want to head right back!
And it was wonderful seeing Echo and her family again. Thank you!!
Lovely flying, great production
Thu, 2008-02-28 14:01 by Keith
Thanks for sharing this one, Harvey. The lads and ladettes at the Beeb did a great job putting it together, while all you had to do was fly with great skill and, it must be said, grace. The ellies, led by Echo, added just the right touch of down-to-earth, why-we-are-here. I also experienced the runny eyes, ears, nose etc -- not quite tears but then I'm not a crusty old bush pilot, just a miserable old displaced Canadian.
I had a hangar in Africa....
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KL
The joy of flying
Thu, 2008-02-28 12:46 by jpoole
Oh, Harvey, thank you so much for sharing this beautiful flight with us. Brought tears to my ears, too. Joyce
Amazing
Thu, 2008-02-28 12:36 by Petter
Great to experience, Harvey, both the flight and the production!
Best, P
Stunning!
Fri, 2008-02-29 14:40 by clm1950
Thank you for sharing that beautiful video with us...