Maggie's Farm

Amen. When it comes to the expression "keeping your cool", I think we've just seen Exhibit A.

Rats. I knew some wet blanket would come along and spoil everything. I just didn't know he'd arrive by name!

What's interesting about the Snopes article is that they say, "All signs point to...", which is kind of un-Snopes-ish of them. They're usually fairly definitive. As such, putting a 'FALSE' up there seems kind of rash.

I have a much better version of the 'airplane crash' here, as well as the infamous '405' crash.

It's a miracle anyone survived.

Gee, that was even worse than the Snopes piece. Nothing but conjecture and "it shouldn't be able to happen". And in those blurry three frames, I'd love to know how he could see the pilot's head not moving and the landing struts not bending. The prop didn't strike the ground because of the angle of the plane -- duh. And the side-by-side shots looked fairly convincing. In truth, I couldn't see why he was comparing them. It looked like the plane had a white stripe down it's side in the flight pic, but that could be nothing more than sunlight. Ditto the way the tail insignia was slightly different.

In the psychological world, they call this "reaching".

Rich - I saw differences, and what could be viewed as "significant" ones, but any time sunlight enters the picture, the rules change. My mom used to have an Acura that looked pitch black in the garage, blue in the dappled shade, and green in the sunlight. So a side-by-side in those circumstances isn't very convincing.

Now here's a thought:

To pull something like this off takes some exceptionally sophisticated software. Let's just say this is no Photoshop project. Plus, scale backgrounds have to be built to accomodate the model, so the whole thing involves some serious bucks.

The airplane crash vid on the Snopes site (I linked to a better one later) looked as real as real could be. But, at the end, you find out it was produced by a company.

So, which company made this exceptional piece? A piece so sophisticated that neither Snopes nor the video can point to one single frame and say, "Here's where it cut to the model", or "You can tell by so-and-so that it's a fake." If something's that good, it's no accident.

So, if it's a fake, which company spent $20,000 to have it made? And why?

"I remember seeing something about this being an ad for a certain product-"

Acme Parachutes? :)

They're definitely the real deal. Anyone into ultralights knows about them. I mention them here on the 'Design Improvements' page.

Earl -

I checked over the web site, and everything there indicates it was for real. Not only did he talk about it in a video, but it could also be argued that if anyone could pull something like this off, it'd be a stunt pilot. How you got "fake" out of that is anyone's guess, but the site certainly didn't bolster your argument.

Plus, it still doesn't answer how some average flight jock could possess such video skills & expensive software to put together such a masterpiece that no one can point to a single frame and cry "Bunk!" Even the awesome '405' video (see my link above) has a few tiny flaws that can be pointed to. I've seen this thing about 20 times and can't find a one.

Thank goodness he didn't have time to yank his helmet off during the ordeal in order to see better.

(??)