I remember reading (in a book or magazine) many years ago that fighters bouncing German airfields in WW2 sometimes came back with grass stains.
Don’t know if these might help but:
Looks real (not that that means much these days), but the second to last pic looks weird to me, and I’m not sure if it’s the angle or fake. And as far as I can tell that is frame by frame (I downloaded the vid and slowed it way down), so I’m not sure if we’ll have much more to base the answer on.
IIRC in *The Right Stuff *by Tom Wolfe, he claims pilots in prop planes would ‘mow the grass’ in low flybys.
Judging from that pic, and comparing it with the actual FMA IA 63 aircraft, the recorded image of the aircraft appears to exhibit severe rolling shutter distortion. The interesting thing is that if the camera is scanning from top-to-bottom, then the distortion is as if the plane is moving right-to-left across the frame; this could be explained by the observer rotating the camera from right to left in an attempt to track the plane, but rotating far too quickly.
If this video is a fake, then the author has demonstrated extreme attention to detail.
Could it be a semi-fake? An RC plane perhaps. If you google that model plane it seems there are several RC kits of out there of it.
I found this somewhat similar video. However this plane is in the frame much longer and sure seems to be a larger size RC plane.
With the detail in this Mig RC and the flying they are doing I could be swayed to believe an RC with a little sound dubbing could be what we are seeing.
The original question was not “could this be faked,” it was “is this faked.” While I admit it may be possible to fake a low pass, there’s no clear evidence (to me, at least) that this particular one was indeed faked.
I agree there is nothing obvious that shouts fake.
The OP also alluded it maybe being somewhere a bit in between.
Which it does to me as well. Way too many proper visual cues for it to be just an edit job. I think the thing that is bugging me is the buffeting post pass just doesn’t quite seem right to me. But I have no firsthand experience to go from.
I’m changing my thoughts to real. After seeing this F16 video it isn’t hard to imagine that with the ground being mostly all the same color (say grass as in the other video) and if there was even the slightest rise to it going away from you, this plane would have looked just as low.
Thank you all, the rolling shutter aspect in particular does seem fairly convincing.
Otara
Beat me to it, TriPolar. IIRC, the pilot referred to was astronaut Gordon Cooper who was flying low enough to top off the grass somewhere in the Everglades (with a wop, wop, wop…). Even thinking about this passage causes me to cringe.:eek:
Video of same flyby from inside the cockpit.
I would say the evidence is stacking up for it being real.
If that guy isn’t grounded and going to a court-martial his superiors should be for dereliction of duty.
There was a bit of a foofaraw over a low flyover at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City in November of ‘10; one of many videos is here. I believe that the final report stated that they overflew the stadium 16’ above the press box at 400 knots, in violation of multiple regulations. It resulted in disciplinary action for all four pilots.
I note the HUD shows the R (radar altimeter?) dropping in increments of 10. At its lowest point it just shows “010” [meters, I presume].