The video is a guy standing in the middle of a runway. A jet flies over him at extremely high speed and appears to be a few feet above his head.
Here, it’s hosted a killsometime.com
VIDEO
Or youtube if you’re inclined
VIDEO
I don’t want to bias anyone’s opinions, so I’ll keep my view to myself for now.
So, real or fake? And more importantly, why do you think so? Better yet, can you prove or disprove the veracity of this clip?
I don’t see any reason to doubt that it’s real. It’s tagged as “ultra-high speed”, but it was clearly subsonic (no sonic boom), so it really wasn’t that fast as jets go.
I’ve also seen aircraft do passes about that low at airshows, so the only thing that surprises me about this clip is that the guy had the stones to stand there.
The one thing that might cast doubt on its veracity is the fact that the guy got buzzed and demonstrated no effects from the expected jet blast as the aircraft flew by. But for me, that’s not enough to say it’s a fake.
I stopped it a few times as the plane went over the soldier and the aircraft appears to be about 50 feet agl. It certainly looks less at full speed.
No way to determine whether the video’s been shooped or not based on the resolution of the YouTube version, but I vote ‘real’.
Real, the plane just appears to be closer than it actually is.
Fake. Nerves of steel don’t trump the laws of physics. He should have been buffeted by the vortex coming off the plane. I don’t see any signs of movement.
My first guess was fake, because I would expect this guy to be blown away by the air as the plane flew by. But then I paused the video though and looked at the shadows, and both the plane and person seem to have shadows that are at least close to being the same angle (from my non-expert POV).
That was my thought too.
It’s real and it’s simply (to a degree) camera perspective. The plane appears to be faster and closer than it really is.
The plane looks more like a Harrier than a Mirage. But I’ve seen videos of a Tornado and a Jaguar flying lower.
I think the downwash is less intense when a plane is flying fast (than when flying slow). here’s another low fly-by under similar circumstances. It does kick up the dust a bit, but it’s not like a hurricane or anything. So if the macho-man in the OP’s video has the balls to stand still while being buzzed, it’s certainly plausible that he’s physically capable of doing so, despite a wee bit of turbulence around him. He did put his hand up to hold his beret down, a reasonable response to mild turbulence - a gesture I wouldn’t have expected him to include if the whole thing was faked.
I think it’s fake. There are places where you can pause it and see a double image of the plane, and even a double image of the shadow. I’ve seen video where a songle frame is blurred by speed, but the subject isn’t doubled. If you pause at :06, when you can still see the tail of the plane above the guy’s head, you can clearly see two wing shadows and a tail shadow to the left of the runway centerline.
Can anyone come up with a non-faked explanation of how that could work?
BTW, the guy’s torso shadow looks to be shorter than his height, yet pretty much touches the plane shadow. If it is real, the plane is just as low as it appears to be. And you can’t really tell if the guy is buffeted, bacause the camera is buffeted so bad.
FTR, I’m in the “I can’t see any reason to believe it’s fake” camp. But, this site seems to be about as torn as on the other site where I first saw this posted.
And yeah, pretty much the same types of rationalizations and explanations for both perspectives.
I was really hoping someone (given the broad range of dopers worldwide) could have first hand knowledge of whether or not it is real.
I gotta look back, but I think Boyo Jim could have nailed it. It’s possible that this video is a composite. Mount a camera and let the plane flyby. Leave the camera there and take a video of the guy standing. Then use editing software to combine the two.
Actually, that double image is just the way some digital videos work.
THIS is a video I took and posted to youtube. I can 100% guarantee that it is real.
If you pause it at 1:41 (and many other places) you’ll see a double image.
The only reason to believe that it isn’t real is that the bloke is very calm and doesn’t flinch. But then, if he know’s he’s being filmed and trusts the pilot (and is facing toward the aircraft), I can believe he can stand there without flinching.
Even if it is a fake, it wouldn’t be this simple. The camera is not locked off, it moves from side to side with true parallax. Plus, its movement seemingly corresponds to the physical effect of the plane passing by. You would need to replicate this exact same movement on both passes in order to be able to achieve a seamless composite.
can anybody identify the uniform?
What military allows a billion-dollar plane to take off without first verifying that the runway is clear? This is basic procedure even for dirt strip airports with tiny crop dusting planes.
But the camera apparently was anchored in place, in the middle of the runway. Well enough that after shaking from the blast, it did not actually move
Some more low-flying nutters in fast jets:
Low flying airliner landing at St Maarten.
I didn’t get the impression that he was taking off, it looked like he was just doing a low pass.