James May’s Toy Stories: Flight Club

In the latest episode of James May’s Toy Stories (Flight Club), he attempted to achieve the first flight across the English Channel by an engineless, home-made supersized toy glider to break the British distance record in the process. There was one major problem: French bureaucrats would not budge to allow the flight to take place – meaning the 22 mile flight had to take place across the Bristol Channel as a substitute for the English Channel.

Otherwise and what’s also interesting about the episode is that James looks into the possibility that British school children were the real pioneers of aviation by making paper airplanes or paper darts (some of which resembled the Concorde) more than 100 years ago.

The Love Planes’ blog has pointed out that if you missed the episode, you can watch it online from the BBC directly depending upon your location (or click on TV Guide here to find out when the show will repeat). However, a quick search on YouTube reveals the episode has been posted by a couple of users (and so far BBC has apparently not noticed them!).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k41z_ujop4&w=480]