A lot has been made over the past few years as to whether or not Wild Bill's aircraft flew, with his Hybri-Jet engine. I had been told there was a video floating around that showed his aircraft in flight. I finally got a copy of the video, thanks to Stan March. I digitized it using my Tivo and sat down to analyze it.
My conclusion is that the video was edited and the in-flight portion was spliced in, showing another aircraft, in a totally different airport, in what in my opinion is a crude attempt to mislead the viewer into thinking the two aircraft are one and the same. The aircraft shown in the video making a couple of runs in the pattern is C-GBDA, the Canadian-built BD-5J with an Allison engine, rectangular exhaust below the horizontal stabilator, no thrust attenuator (and no standard BD-5J exhaust/prop tube, for that matter), and the funky winglets on the wingtips. The airport shown is not Wild Bill's home airport shown in the rest of the video, it's Kelowna Airport in Canada, the homebase of C-GBDA during its flight testing. Also, the sequence at the end of segment 6 is a repetition of thrust attenuator testing just a few minutes before, but has been added to make someone believe that the aircraft had just taxied back to the ramp after the "flight."
I have divided the video into six portions. The segment relevant to the above is the last one. I did not digitize the portion of the video after the in-flight sequence because it only shows static engine testing out in the desert somewhere.
All the files are Windows Media Player files (WMV's) that can be played with Windows Media Player or Winamp. Each of the segments represents about 5 minutes worth of video. The resolution is set to 320 x 240, VHS quality, and low quality audio because the quality on the original is not much better.
To view each segment click on the link below: