At 16:34 06 January 2011, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:22:53 -0800, Eric Greenwell
wrote:


I'd love to see "3-D" perspective view of the wake behind a towplane,
as
I doubt I'm visualizing it well.

Have you seen this?
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...tex/TH15G5.htm



BTW: Have you already seen this? (starts at 0:55):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__pyxPb6gMc

Note how long the air behind the plane continues to sink after the
plane has passed... and how the wing tip vortices and the downwash
behind the wing interact.



Andreas



nice video - that's an amazing facility ONERA has in Lisle.

Airbus have also been using a ship towing tank to understand the way wake
vortices decay behind an aircraft. There's a really neat effect a long
way downstream which you can see happening in contrails on a good day -
the vortices start oscillating from side-to-side, then merge and split
into rings.