Warbird Information Exchange

So I started a new job a couple months ago, working in the control room of the TV station here in Kalamazoo. My schedule has me working overnights Friday and Saturday, and there's not much to do but monitor equipment. I was poking around in some old videotape archives tonight when I ran across some tapes marked "High On Kalamazoo Airshow 1992."

I couldn't help but watch the tapes, and found tons of footage of the Grumman Cat Flight (complete with an F9F) as well as individual performances of the prop cats (including John Ellis in the T-cat) and Dale "Snort" Snodgrass wringing out an F-14. There's also some footage of the Air Zoo's P-47 and Sue Parrish's pink P-40 cranking up and taxiing out (haven't found any footage of them in the air though.) I was at that show, and the video brought back a lot of memories. That was the year they did the Doolittle Raid re-enactment, but there's no video of it. That was later in the day, and the cameraman may have had to get back to the station in time to get the footage on the 6:00 news.

The footage is crystal clear, but was shot on Beta (the industry standard before digital.) I'm going to see if I can find a way to dub it off onto DVD.

Now, back to the overnight infomercials....

SN

Sweet find!

OT, but why would the TV industry standardize on Beta when the rest of the world overwhelmingly went with VHS? To keep 'unauthorized use' at a minimum?

Still OT
I thought that Beta was the superior media, but VHS won the marketing war.

Still OT
I thought that Beta was the superior media, but VHS won the marketing war.

higher quality images on Beta. For broadcast and to dupe or edit you want the highest quality that you can easily get. Beta was the best they could get .

_________________
"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

Sony foolishly kept too much of the Beta copyrights for too long. It was better, but no one else could make 'em without paying Sony.

_________________
"Anyway, the throat feels a bit rough...the legs have gone...but I'm still able to chant, so let's get going."

Joe Strummer, 1999

Yep..Beta is a vastly superior format to VHS, but VHS is considerably cheaper, which is why it won out in the consumer market. I'm still new in the TV world (spent the past 15 years in radio) but it appears Beta is still the preferred tape format for broadcast.

Watching the video was kind of bittersweet, since the F9F became a mangled wreck a couple years later (and still hasn't been restored AFAIK,) all the Tomcats are now gone, and none of the Air Zoo's birds have flown in nearly a decade (save the Tigercat and Bearcat, which were sold to new owners earlier this year.) I believe that was also the final airshow appearance of Sue Parrish's P-40, which now hangs in the Air Zoo lobby.

SN

You guys have things just little mixed up.
Beta is still a standard that many TV stations, production houses and Cable systems use, but's it's almost totally suplanted. Many have gone digital with either DigiBeta, DVcam or other HD formats.

Back in the early days the battle over a "standard" format for the general public was between VHS and "BETA MAX" format.

Beta Max was superior than VHS, but Beta Max was not the same tape that the TV stations were using. Beta Tapes are different than Beta Max tapes.

To keep it simple, Beta runs at a faster rate than Beta Max.

What ever you do, try and get permission from the station so maybe you could edit and sell some of that wonderful "High on Kalamazoo" footage to some of us!
Jerry

_________________
"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Thanks for the info..I didn't realize that Beta and Betamax were different. Like I said, I'm still new to the TV world..right now I'm basically just a button-pusher.

SN