My absolute favourite type of content on YouTube is a series based adventure – where the protagonist sets off on a mission and brings us along with them over the course of multiple videos. Series such as Louis Cole and JP’s World Flight, Geowizard’s Straight Line Missions, Thomas Heaton’s Iceland in a Van trip. Not only do I benefit from following another adventurers decision making processes, seeing how they tackle problems and overcome obstacles, but I also get ideas for places to visit and adventures of my own and it’s fun to watch someone setting themselves a challenge and documenting it for our entertainment.
When the subject matter is aviation and the storytelling is done well it can be an incredibly satisfying experience to ride along as a virtual passenger, learning about another pilot’s troubleshooting techniques and hearing radio calls from other countries and thinking ‘what would I do in that situation’. It’s a great way to learn whilst being entertained at the same time.
Sadly there aren’t many aviation focussed video series like that on YouTube, most aviation videos are one-off day trip type adventures. But the other day I found the channel Buzzin’ around documenting the flight of a single-engine Cessna Cardinal from Lithuania across the North Atlantic to Oshkosh. I’ve been gripped by this series. The videos find a really good mix of aviation content and on-the-ground exploring, a balance which many creators (me included) can sometimes find difficult to get right.
I don’t know the pilot who made this content but it looks like this is the first big adventure he’s posted on his YouTube channel. I have no doubt that if he continues to post content like this it will grow into a popular aviation channel in the future. The videos are calmly presented, the aviation is professionally managed, they’re very satisfying to watch and personally gave me another reason why I want to work hard to get myself flying again so I can have adventures like this one day soon.
I’ve linked to the playlist of 14 videos below. I’m genuinely quite sad now that I’ve got to the end of this series. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the next one he comes up with, but in the meantime go make a cup of tea then enjoy this: