Pocket Sized Posted May 10, 2016 Posted May 10, 2016 TL;DR at the end I'm starting flight training in gliders and went on my 4th and 5th instruction flights this weekend. My most recent instructor was feeling a bit ambitious. He let me do the takeoff roll unassisted but had to help me stay low over the ground until the tow plane lifted off. Now, I was flying the loud, heavy, metal-winged piece of junk known as the Shweizer 2-33 (which I love every inch of). It has a tow hook well below the centerline. That, combined with the heavy controls means you must hold about 15 pounds of forward stick for the entire tow. My hand was still aching after we landed. This forward pressure means you lose a good bit of precision during the tow, which is a very bad thing. I was up and down, up and down, all the way up. At one point I actually had trouble keeping control of the craft, having to use full aileron deflection to keep it level. My instructor let this go on for a bit and then said: "let the stick back a little" and everything smoothed out. I was shocked. He explained I had strayed into the tow plane's wake turbulence. This is something I already knew about but had no idea it was that bad. He demonstrated "boxing the wake" to show where the wake was and how bad it got. In the thick of it, the glider was audibly shaking and I could feel the fuselage flexing. TL;DR: Wake turbulence ain't no joke. In any craft without FBW/SAS you could go to form up on somebody and suddenly get thrown to the side. Also, say goodbye to landing a few seconds behind somebody because their plane is going to leave shittons of dirty air after plowing through it in a near stall. DCS modules are built up to a spec, not down to a schedule. In order to utilize a system to your advantage, you must know how it works.
Retu81 Posted May 10, 2016 Posted May 10, 2016 Yep. It feels like someone grabbed the glider from both wingtips and started shaking it around. :)
Vedexent Posted May 10, 2016 Posted May 10, 2016 Billy Bishop airport in Toronto harbor takes both small general aviation aircraft like C-172s and larger prop passenger aircraft like the Dash-8s. Because the airport is on an island, you can actually see the wake turbulence vortex spreading out on the water behind the larger planes - and you do not want to get caught in that. I never did when I was a student pilot in that neck of the woods (as opposed to a student pilot with training on hold in Alberta), but I could see that I did not want to, either! That said, DCS strives to be a realism based simulator - so I'd actually much prefer that they model wake turbulence. More realism please! :D However, I suspect that accurately modeled wake turbulence would be a very nasty change for the virtual aerobatic squadrons.
mvsgas Posted May 10, 2016 Posted May 10, 2016 Aircraft Wake Turbulence An Interesting Phenomenon Turned Killer Even aircraft with FBW/SAS will get destroyed with wake turbulance This is a direct pdf link https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0ahUKEwiXyd2A4c_MAhXFLmMKHSNVD2IQFggrMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fusaf.aib.law.af.mil%2FExecSum2002%2FF-16C_Luke_25Oct01.pdf&usg=AFQjCNF5gxQJ5R4pGvDLZn48g_3RUifpAw&bvm=bv.121421273,d.cGc&cad=rja To whom it may concern, I am an idiot, unfortunately for the world, I have a internet connection and a fondness for beer....apologies for that. Thank you for you patience. Many people don't want the truth, they want constant reassurance that whatever misconception/fallacies they believe in are true..
Golo Posted May 12, 2016 Posted May 12, 2016 I hope wake turbulence among other things will be simulated in DCS sometime soon, as I was asking many times. This just shows how much more interesting will the flying be with things like this this.
sobek Posted May 12, 2016 Posted May 12, 2016 I think the verdict was that the models that satisfactorily mimic real life behaviour are too complicated for online computation at this time. Personally i'd be willing to settle even for a highly abstracted version in favor of having no model of wake turbulence at all, but i realize this is a complicated topic. Good, fast, cheap. Choose any two. Come let's eat grandpa! Use punctuation, save lives!
Aginor Posted May 12, 2016 Posted May 12, 2016 Agree with Sobek here. Turbulences (not only wake but also thermic effects and so on) are complex, but I would also like to have *something*, perhaps similar to what that other sim with the F-16 has. Realistic? Not really. But it feels nice and very immersive to me. DCSW weapons cheat sheet speed cheat sheet
Slap_Chop Posted May 12, 2016 Posted May 12, 2016 Great Topic Pocket Sized ! That video really nails it SimFreak ! Learned something new today. Cool and thanks. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy and I've had both. [sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]
Golo Posted May 12, 2016 Posted May 12, 2016 I remember flying old Il2 46 with some community super mod which had it simulated. By some approximation I assume, but it was immensely better than without it. So DCS cant do it even in some simplified manner? It would be better than with nothing at all. From my own point of view of course.
Recommended Posts