The single coolest thing I saw in basic training was a cargo jet (c-17?) doing this to a cloud.
We were formed up, marching, facing away from the flight line area; massive carrier had just taken off, and flew right over us - still very low as it passed.
So I’m now watching this thing while thinking “well that was loud as fuck…” and it flies just perfectly over a small low hanging cloud… and just ripped the fucker in half. A column in the center shot downward and quickly dissipated, with the vortex like spinning on each side.
You wouldn’t think moving some fog around would leave that much of an impression, but it was straight up awe inspiring.
It’s so impressive when we get a chance to see something that is normally invisible. The sheer amount of force required to lift something as massive as a cargo place is something that we all get the idea has to be really big, but our brains can’t visualize the scale. It’s like thinking how many grains of sand there there are in a beach or the distance between planets.
But you got the chance to see one of those things demonstrated in a way that even if you don’t understand the underlying principles, it was put into something you get a better understanding of at a primal level.
I’m really glad you got the opportunity to see something like that and share it with us!
This is a really cool display of wing tip vortices. When you see an airplane with a curved tip it’s partly to reduce this effect and the drag associated with it.
That is a cool fact to know! I’ll have to read more about that.
That is really really cool. Makes a lot of sense why they’re so quiet too
I went into the micro structures that help make silent flight possible for owls and not other birds in my big feather post yesterday, if you haven’t had a chance to see that yet.
Also posted a short video that shows flight comparisons between a pigeon, a peregrine, and an owl to go along with it.
Check them out if you’re interested!
That’s a really cool visualization! Thanks for sharing!
I used to work at a store right by a big airport and we were lined up with the runway; airliners coming in for landing flew directly above our building and very low.
Those vortexes from the wings get pushed downward and would audibly hit the side of our building and make a big whooshing jet-like sound as it slid down the building until it hit the ground :)
I did some reading online and most newer jets have little winglets at the end of their wings to prevent this, but I really liked the sound that they made.
