Great Sunday night TV.............

[Nickolas]

BBC2 19:10
Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections - Richard Hammond reveals the surprising engineering connections behind the Formula 1 car. The stars of the most glamorous, and expensive sport on earth wouldn't even cross the starting line without inspiration drawn from a revolutionary 19th-century cannon, ancient sailing boats, jet engine fan blades, body armour and a technique practised by blacksmiths for thousands of years.
Eight hundred horsepower purebreds, F1 cars cost millions of pounds to design and build. They require hundreds of people to ensure they just start, but they have a simple purpose: to go as fast as possible around a track for about two hours on a Sunday. Attaining huge speeds requires a precision-built engine, which maximises its power thanks to a revolutionary cannon, (which is like an open-ended engine cylinder). Richard fires his own home-made cannon to show how minimising what gunners called 'windage', the gap between the cannon ball (or piston) and the barrel (or cylinder) increases the power of the shot (or engine). With so much power F1 cars can hit easily 200mph - faster than a Jumbo Jet at take-off - and they too could become airborne. But those same wings that lift a Jumbo into the air can also press an F1 car into the ground. Richard takes his modified car to a wind tunnel and adds a ton of weight to it using wind alone, all thanks to a shape derived from the sails of ancient dhows.
Carbon fibre was pioneered by Rolls Royce as a new material for fan blades in jet engines. It is light but still stronger than stee, the sort of claim Richard can't resist testing and proving. F1 cars carry 200 litres of petrol in a tank that sits between the driver and a hot engine. To contain the fuel the engineers need a strong, light, puncture-proof tank. The answer is Kevlar, the same material used in body armour such as bullet-proof vests, which Richard tests with flaming arrows. Finally, Richard visits modern blacksmiths to see how the ancient technique of forging makes stronger swords - and F1 wheels.

BBC2 20:00
Britain's Secret Seas -In the second programme in the series, explorer Paul Rose, marine biologist Tooni Mahto and maritime journalist Frank Pope explore the wild seas around Scotland.
The team travel to Bass Rock, one of the largest gannet colonies in the world. They are there to try and find out why when most British seabird populations are in decline, the northern gannet is bucking the trend. Tooni helps scientists who are using GPS trackers to discover the extraordinary distances gannets can fly in the search for food. Paul goes beneath the waves to witness the amazing diving ability of Britain's largest seabird.
Tooni joins a scientist in St Andrews Bay in search of the bottlenose dolphin to find out why dolphins have unique signature whistles - could they be names as we know them? She also takes Paul on a spectacular night dive at St Abbs in search of the amazing sea creatures that fluoresce beyond our visual spectrum. And intriguingly, this discovery has been used to help study cancerous cells.
Expedition leader, Paul Rose, meets the hidden heroes of the Royal Navy. They are on a special clearance mission around Garvie Island at Cape Wrath. The Navy divers go underwater clearing live 1,000lb unexploded bombs dropped by aircraft during training exercises. These are modern and extremely powerful weapons that must be detonated with explosives - underwater.
We have over 25,000 wrecks around the British Isles. These wrecks are a rich archaeological record of our maritime heritage, but sadly they are being damaged by trawlers, souvenir hunters and the forces of nature. Frank and Paul Rose go to the Sound of Mull, to see first-hand what can be done to preserve the history locked away in these relics.
BBC2 21:00

BBC2 21:00 As others have noted Operation Crossbow -
The heroic tales of World War II are legendary, but Operation Crossbow is a little known story that deserves to join the hall of fame: how the Allies used 3D photos to thwart the Nazis' weapons of mass destruction before they could obliterate Britain.
This film brings together the heroic Spitfire pilots who took the photographs and the brilliant minds of RAF Medmenham that made sense of the jigsaw of clues hidden in the photos. Hitler was pumping a fortune into his new-fangled V weapons in the hope they could win him the war. But Medmenham had a secret weapon of its own, a simple stereoscope which brought to life every contour of the enemy landscape in perfect 3D.
The devil was truly in the detail and, together with extraordinary personal testimonies, the film uses modern computer graphics on the original wartime photographs to show just how the photo interpreters were able to uncover Hitler's nastiest secrets.

That's tonight's TV sorted.

[Xplumberlives]

Looks good, thanks, I will catch up later!

[Nickolas]

Well that was a good evenings viewing..........
Good old BBC. Don't mind my licence fee being spent like that.

[Xplumberlives]

And how often can we say that just lately?

[Nickolas]

And how often can we say that just lately?

Quite

[Xplumberlives]

Just watched the Garvey Island EOD part and was a little troubled that the RN EOD Officer allowed the presenter to say that they were DEFUSING the 1000lb bombs, they were actually making them HIGH ORDER as originally designed!

DEFUSING would not involve making them go BANG!!!!!

And having Watched Richard Hammond and his ENGINEERING CONNECTIONS, can he not find his way to the barbers, desperately needs to get rid of his FOPPISH hairstyle!

Now watching OPERATION CROSSBOW!