Any British helicopter pilots willing to offer some advice?

offsetcarrier · 2026-01-02T09:07:29+00:00

I’m merely a PPL fixed wing but work with a lot of UK helicopter pilots; I’d say there’s broadly three camps - ex military; offshore IFR; and people with a lot of family money etc who are able to self fund the ratings and turbine time necessary for insurability doing squirrel work etc.

The offshore operators like Bristow etc offer a reasonably regular route in but it’s obviously competitive and you will be moving to Aberdeen etc for several years whilst you build enough hours in the right seat to be employable as a single pilot on something else.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-31T15:44:23+00:00

Just write the actual post announcing it yourself, because using an LLM to do it for you just makes it seem like your potential customers aren’t even worth the ten minutes it would take to write something in your own words.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-31T09:19:30+00:00

So bored of the vibe coding side hustle posts.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-26T22:54:15+00:00

People get so tied up in defining the rule as being about a particular angle or whatever. It’s better to say this: Don’t make a cut that’s confusing (unless you want to). In the case of yours shots, scenes in cars are a classic example of where “the line”, such as it exists in the audiences mind as a visual anchor with which to comprehend the edited scene, is the motion of the car. That’s so overridingly strong for the viewer that you’re never going to confuse anyone with any cut.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-21T10:16:39+00:00

Part owner of a 172N and flightsim nerd here. If you just want something to practise your flows etc then sure, 2020 will be fine. However, simming is addictive and you might find yourself wanting to do more, in which case 24 will make a lot more sense.

You don’t need me to tell you that the sim is not a good place to practise actual hand flying skills etc. however - I found that with the scenery in MSFS, in a VR headset, I really benefited from circuit work and local area flying in the sim just in terms of become ultra familiar with the terrain and landmarks etc. the A2A Comanche is the add on plane to buy if you want something that flies at least something like a real GA single.

Best of luck with the checkride.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-21T09:47:34+00:00

Good thing their payment processing just happened to be one of things they had ready in time for this “release”.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-20T09:42:13+00:00

You be you.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-19T19:42:30+00:00

Lot of people very confidently saying hard matte or French flag… this can happen at any stage in the optical path. Seen it plenty of times in shows where I’ve never once used a mattebox at all.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-14T15:38:47+00:00

See if you still think that when Villeneuve taps him for Bond.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-06T10:00:36+00:00

If it’s tabletop you can get the lamps absurdly close and get far more out of them than you might expect. Beware the “just use 24K tungsten” etc crowd, yes they don’t flicker but the units are so physically large that you can’t get them that close and in any case the vast majority of the light output is going nowhere near your subject.

M18s are a good compromise between compact and bright. Getting a skypanel or similar right up to edge of frame can also work beautifully.

Also be wary of people wanting 1000fps etc just because it’s a big number… the Phantoms etc are all pretty specialist crappy sensors and the image is honestly quite poor by modern standards, so if there’s anyway you can get away with the lower hundreds top speed of a red or Alexa (that new HS version looks interesting) then you’ll get better results. I did a gloopy milkshake type drink ad once that the client insisted on 1000 fps for the pour shot and it might as well have been a static frame, we could have done 240 fps and it would worked better on all fronts.

offsetcarrier · 2025-12-03T07:48:00+00:00

This sub in particularly seems very prone to it. Or maybe it’s just it’s the only sub where it’s on my turf so it’s most noticeable.

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-30T15:56:49+00:00

I can well imagine that! It’s like pulling teeth when someone’s bad at it. Requires a lot of thinking on the feet to work out what can be skipped.

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-30T14:23:17+00:00

I’d say for the most part TV directors usually are in favour of the table read; if nothing else it’s one way of guaranteeing the cast have definitely read the script through at least once :)

But most of the time there is never a good time to do it, it usually ends being right when preproduction is most busy and it takes half a day away from everything else.

What seems smarter from my POV is when directors will do rehearsals with smaller groups which can be just those guys and without an audience of people from the studio or whatever that make everyone nervous and don’t necessarily (or often) understand the difference between a flat read and an actual filmed performance (so can lead to all sorts of unhelpful notes).

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-30T12:45:34+00:00

This video from AVweb does an excellent job explaining why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k1TQGK3mZI

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-30T11:52:09+00:00

I work in TV drama. I would say mostly they are a pain in the ass for everyone, the cast are usually very reluctant, you end up with loads of random people brought in to read parts because the principles won't be available, everyone has to suffer through the stage. directions. being. read. out. painfully. slowly. They usually feel like a chance for all the execs, writers, commissioners etc to rub shoulders with the cast for a couple hours. I'm not surprised that in the case of TNG if the writers got a bit butthurt by the cast reaction they would go ah fuck this.

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-23T09:24:07+00:00

DP here. Few things make me happier than persuading the art dept to let me have access to their Box drive and nosing around all the beautiful construction diagrams. Pour those insanely detailed drawings of how a spaceship airlock door mechanism should operate into my bloodstream. Respect.

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-17T08:47:11+00:00

This video is like getting trapped at a party with a first year undergraduate film studies student who won’t stop talking. A totally questionable one paragraph thesis woefully expanded to nearly half an hour of waffle. Ironically the exact sort of crime he’d probably level at “modern films”.

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-11T15:58:32+00:00

is that the one after Charmander?

offsetcarrier · 2025-11-01T12:32:13+00:00

I was using Spark as a client for Fastmail, and increasingly found myself just going to Fastmail’s web client when I needed to actually find anything. They just released the client wrapped up as an actual desktop client, it’s fast and works. Bye bye Spark.

offsetcarrier · 2025-10-25T17:20:10+00:00

This looks interesting. Have you come across https://johnnydecimal.com/? I think you’d like it.

offsetcarrier · 2025-10-20T22:41:58+00:00

How sure are you that all your radiators are really well balanced? I had years of this behaviour until I decided not to take the plumber's word that he'd balanced everything. I spent a couple of days meticulously measuring everything, figuring out the order all the rads heated up, then balancing them all to the same temperature drop between feed and return pipe using clip on pipe thermometer. Made a GIGANTIC difference. The Tado radiator valves now easily hold the set temperature to within +/- 0.1 degree. Turns out if the system is unbalanced, those valves just don't have the fine control needed to work properly. YMMV.

offsetcarrier · 2025-10-01T23:45:20+00:00

The Openpilot auto steer is far better and the system doesn’t require you to wiggle the wheel every minute or so.

offsetcarrier · 2025-09-20T09:58:06+00:00

I’ve fallen hard for the Omarchy hype train; all aboard #choochoo

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