Well, it’s taken me nearly a year to get this far. That’s mostly because I couldn’t find the files that I’d recorded from the tape recorder on my old computer. I resorted to re-recording them. Easier said than done. I had changed to a Mac and I had a lot of trouble trying to get the little minicassette recorder to yield its secrets to the big bad Mac. Finally I had a brainwave and went to the laptop before the one I thought I’d used, and they were still nestling safely there.
You don’t want to know the rest of the difficulties I went through, but I suspect I should have edited them on the old laptop instead of the new system, which is too smart for me.
I still don’t know whether the audio file of Geoffrey telling how they sorted out the blind landings protocol at Lindi will work.
But I have a file, and let’s see if I can load it.
After a few tries, reconversions, adjustment of settings, I have. For my future reference, save at medium or low settings as MP3. I’m not sure how I can attach an image onto it, but maybe I’ll find out in due course.
I hope you enjoy it! Please leave a note if you do, as feedback will determine whether I do more.
WONDERFUL!!!!
Your report in the book presents everything very much as he stated: well edited to add clarity and not to dilute the facts, as he does use a lot of expressions that reek of the issues that had to be addressed. Hearing his own story at first-hand is excellent, but whether you can justify doing more of these tapes – given it must be time-consuming – is questionable. I would welcome hearing more of them, but that is not the point.
Do you have any contact with the BA Archive test at Heathrow? Operations specialists in the airline will probably be as mesmerised as I am at hearing of such innovative application of the knowledge and expoerience they had (and I think I am right to say he was still quite young when he was at Lindi), The two leading people there are Keith Hayward and Jim Davies: both long-time employees and total aviation men.
Thanks for getting the tape onto accessible media so soon, and so pleased I can only keep saying thanks again.
All the best
Mike
Thanks, Mike! I’m so glad you enjoyed it.
I think the time-consuming is largely a factor of learning as you go. I believe these things should be designed well, and intuitive, but sometimes I just don’t have enough intuition. 🙂 Come to think of it, my dad was much the same but had more tuition!
I will do some more… including maybe one or two that I omitted from the book; insightful for the period but not really Geoffrey’s story.
I do have some contact with BA Archives, but when I last checked I think things were being restructured. So thanks for those contacts and I can move forward with them again. Croydon Airport Society have been enormously helpful.
I enjoyed hearing his voice and getting a sense of how he told the story, but I have to admit that between the quality of the recording and the accent it took a lot of concentration for me to follow it, so I’m not sure about that. I do better with printed words 🙂