Anyone else have fleeting special interests? Mine's been air traffic control.

[Megamegablahblah]

I have been watching You Tube videos of interactions between Air Traffic Controllers and Pilots on repeat, some funny ones. Also sad ones. I practically feel like I have learnt how to fly a plane. Clearly I haven't!

The ones I like best are where the ATC puts the Pilots through their paces. They are so good at their jobs. They also have some amusing interactions. I also just really like, I mean love, the sound of a voice over a radio frequency.

I'm not sure but I think historical disasters could become a special interest. There's something so all encompassing about learning everything about a past event from perspectives of different people and also through the lens of technologies.

I wonder how the 'smart phone age' will be studied in future centuries, it's been a mixed bag so far 😂

DF designed these. He worked on a v high profile one (the replacement of). The thing is if you fall in the sea you have something like 6 seconds before you go into hypothermia.

It is quite interesting. I remember looking some military bases up and seeing how they are in strategic locations. It made me think about fragile everything is.

We would love an AMA 😁

😂 I wonder if there's a word for this. 'I've now watched so many videos I could go into business'. It should have a word.

Oh that sounds really interesting.

Omg this has 11 series.

I've been a bit obsessed with the idea of making a ginger bread dolls house this week.....no idea where that came from 😂

Building an emergency survival lean-to and fire in a forest in a winter blizzard. It’s a massive YouTube genre.

I am also fascinated by large structures. I’m fortunate that my work sometimes takes me inside some; Kielder Dam; The Humber Bridge; various pumping stations and culverts , but best one was The Thames Barrier. We walked “across” the river from South to north, and stood on the middle pier. Amazing.

THIS IS ADORABLE!!!

Ah yes, the Chernobyl documentaries are so moving. I think I fell in love with Gorbachev listening to his interview. That was a real man.

Agree about the webcams, it is like watching moss grow at the moment. I still look at vedur.is every morning though, because you never know. I was on there during a huge swarm, switched to webcam and saw one eruption start live.

There was a TV programme about the Thames Barrier with Rob Bell, yes very interesting how it all worked.

I love the thames barrier too! It's beautiful! I like those gas towers, there's some that have been made into flats near the canal in kings cross.
I like the Barking barrier as well. It's not like the thames one but still cool.
I'd like to visit Dungeness with it's slightly post apocalyptic vibe!

So it wasn’t on Netflix, but it was on Prime.

Then I fell into a hole and ended up watching Face off, inside the NHL until 1am. Happily I now have a soft spot for two new players, Pasta and Nylander.

This thread is not helping!

My dad was a production engineer designing/running oil rigs too. I never got to go to one for obvious reasons but they seemed exciting! He hated the oil industry though.

Oh I’ve just remembered a previous interest I went hard for, the Tube! There’s a series on U called Secrets of the London Underground or something similar and I was obsessed with it! The history of it and the design of the stations and all kinds of other aspects you don’t think of as you’re being swept along in the rush hour crowd.

I had a fleeting obsession with deep cave diving. I could tell you everything you'd need to know about re breathers, oxygen levels and stages of ascending. Im totally claustrophobic, so the thought of going down into a narrow, deep cave, fills me with horrors.
Totally fascinating though

@Megamegablahblah I 😘 be anything to do with planes. My brother was taken weekly to put local airport from the age of 2 and I went too. It was in the early 70s so not many planes coming or going.

He is now 53 years later a performance engineer for an airline. My son who's 31 is thinking of becoming a pilot.

I have a toy that tells you what planes are nearby in my sitting room. It's so cool!

I had that as a kid! I had a massive tube map on my wall and fantasized about what all the different places were like. I liked the fabric on the seats! I visited quite a lot of them on my Sunday morning walks with my dad. I loved DLR when it first opened. Pretending to drive the train! That was our bonding time.

I really wanted a functional ticket machine as a toy. I tried to make one out of cardboard boxes with very limited success! 😆

There’s a really good book called Underground London which includes things like lost rivers, the tube, the little mini post train, and the plumbing of the Houses of Parliament which I can highly recommend for those of you who are subterranean nerds.

Ooh I’ll look that up! I only visit London a couple of times a year but I love discovering new things. Last time was Shad Thames, I’d been over Tower Bridge from Tower Hill many times but had never once turned left at the end.

On my last jaunt I spent the day with a good friend that works in London and he took me to the Postal Museum and on the postal train. We had the best day, a couple of 40-somethings getting excited over a tiny underground train. I also once nipped off from a girls weekend (they were all sleeping in) and did the Tower Bridge experience, so interesting!

There was a good Tom Scott video about this recently:

It needs to be made into a film.

I've just finished this (there's 5 series).

Such a sad one where the plane ran out of oxygen and circled the airport 5 times on autopilot before they scrambled F16s and realised they had all passed out. One person woke up and tried to fly the plane but it was too late.