"Mxsmanic" wrote ...

From my back-of-envelope calculations, if it's a two-minute turn, the
downwash
and vortices would have descended by some 2000 feet or so by the time you
close the circle (depending on various factors). I'm surprised that there
would be anything to feel if you are maintaining the same altitude, which
is
why I didn't consider this. However, if it has actually happened to you,
I'll
have to review my calculations.

Tip vortices is not the only form of turbulence behind an aircraft. And an
airliner on approach has a different type of wake than a trainer at
altitude.

Anyway, while it might be interesting in real life, it would be
horrifically
CPU-intensive to simulate, since it would require modeling of large chunks
of
air away from the aircraft, which is as compute-bound as weather
reporting.

Indeed, modeling any sort of wake turbulence would be this way, unless the
simulation were canned and provided as a couple of fixed scenarios that
wouldn't require calculation of air movements. But then you have to
wonder if
it would be worthwhile, either, since it's a really bad idea to fly
through
another aircraft's wake turbulence. If it's mild there's not much to
simulate; if it's heavy it's too dangerous to approach.

The best value of a good simulator is that it enables training of situations
that would be unsafe to do in a real aircraft.Flying into wake turbulence is
a good example.