Does anyone have a link to the original video which gives a "new video angle" seen in the video in post #145, the CBC "Key moments in the Snowbirds crash" video with a former Snowbirds pilot commenting?
The video is a good example of how the angle of view changes the perception of an object's angle -- That is,
the ejection was not nearly as vertical as it seemed to many of us from the most commonly seen videos. The new video shows that while there was a considerable dive, which was bad for trying to be in the ejection envelope it wasn't close to a vertical dive with flight speed in knots = descent rate.
I took some caps from the video and cropped each using just the bottom 640*480 part of the video. Since the cloud base and sometimes ground can be seen, one can see that the camera is fairly level.
Video caps are roughly at the time of :
1. Canopy blowing off
2. First ejection rocket seen
3. Second ejection rocket seen
4. Some time later
(And the video cuts before anything hits the ground)
While talking about this video making the angles LESS steep than other videos appear, it is also true that despite the video viewpoint being more "beside the action", by looking upwards somewhat from the horizon that makes the visual angle of descent less than the actual angle. So one can't just put a protractor to the screen and say these shallower angles are the true ones either.
Still, look at those smoke trails ... they were NOT anywhere near a vertical dive. Which to me makes the problem of not getting a full canopy before running out of sky, more frustrating.
As for the issue of
"Why turn left (towards the city) instead of heading straight (river area)?", as usual we don't know all the factors involved. But it certainly could have been things like (a) being on the left side of the formation to start with! -- Pull away from the other aircraft, or (b) initially thinking it was only a partial engine failure and instinctively trying to take up around into a circuit.
