Getting our hands on the 16mm film of the July 1st test flight that may enable Jeff Glickman to do a conclusive comparison between the Miami Patch and Artifact 2-2-V-1 only took ten years. Now let's try a tough one.
The 30-second Last Takeoff video currently viewable on
Youtube is a digitized copy of a 1980s-vintage VHS dub of a 16mm copy of the original film. The quality of the image is horrible and the 16mm copy from which the VHS dub was made was subsequently lost. The original 16mm film was allegedly shot by a Guinea Airways employee by the name of Sid Marshall and is probably now in Australia if it still exists.
If we could find it and get a high-resolution scan we might be able to pull out details that answer questions such as:
- What did the patch look like when they taxied out for takeoff on July 2nd?
- Is that puff of dust that erupts under the aircraft at 00:22 the belly antenna being ripped off?
Let's see what we can find out.