OKAY, I know I'm not right with this post. I should be thinking about the hobby but this post gets my engineering juices flowing.

This plane is flying at 1100 feet per second. The camera's shutter is set at 1/1000 of a second or 1 millesecond. So now we have a speed of 1.1 feet per millesecond. Sounds simple right? Snap the photo with the plane speed versus the shutter speed being nearly equal.

Not so, it's like winning the Powerball....Okay not really, you'd actually be able to snap this photo about 120 times before you would win the Powerball. Perhaps it's time to get back to the ladies! Geez providers, if I win the Powerball I won't see the sun shine for about a month!

)))))))))

-- Modified on 2/1/2005 5:28:02 PM

I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the photo on the left is a fake. I've seen it many times and it would be unbelievably dangerous and stupid to fly a Tomcat that close to the water - unless you had a death wish. The video on the right looks authentic to me, though.

The article calls it a F18, but it sure does look like one of the F14 Tomcats I serviced back when I was on the Eisenhower.