Why would you be sorry that the views differ. What is there to be sorry about?

I don't know about the "most everyone else's opinion" count there dude, and in any event I didn't kow we were "voting" on the matter. But I think u hit it right on the head when you say opinion. I would not disagree that your opinion is an educated one. So is mine. Nuff said there, lest we start whippin' out our resume's to see who's is biggest.

You make some valid points Chad. I can't argue against them all, nor would I want to. This isn't an all or nothing proposition. In the end, if we only had a magic crystal ball or onboard flight recorder, i suspect that we would both be right and we would both be wrong about various aspects.

As I said, even accounting for various factors, the flap deployment does not appear to be a constant. Certainly, again, the case is not so "clear" as to support the hoisting of this guy by his thumbs. Make no mistake: that is exactly what is going on here, and most of the guys pulling on the halliard are not putting 1/10th the consideration or thought into it that you are.

I applaud your effort in digging up the vid. That is a quite clear case, i think, of loss of lift on one side and resultant crash. In fact, one can plainly see in the beginning of the vid that the thing is quite out of trim with left rudder and right ail trim countering each other. I was only a few seconds into viewing it when thought to myself "oh Sh%t, he's gonna snap left", which he did one turn later.. I had been there, done it, learned from it, saw it coming, and felt his pain when it hit. That airplane had clearly quit flying. (the 104 vid begins similarly then, I think, deteriorates further into a "deep stall", which is a whole other animal)

I don't see that in the subject Viper vid. I see a barrel roll/spiral. I see the exact same flight path as happens during a blown snap when one does not get the inside wing to stall. I see TWO wings still doing the magic Bernoulli thing.

I have seen it my whole life over and over again where folks wrap their popular/easy opinions around scant and/or cherry-picked facts and then throw the whole wad at the pilot's head. It happens in the real aviation world and here in these forums every day.

What I am seeing over and over here is that there seems to be a lot of fratricidal judging and convicting going on based on opinions which are presented as facts, all while the countering views are merely relegated to the status of.....opinions.

I agree completely that there are reasons to initially see this as an airplane stalling and then hitting the ground. But my opinion isn't exactly uneducated, and I see several things that cast serious doubt on that conclusion.