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To: Dirk McQuickly
if I'm reading this correctly, 587 could not have been in the wake of the 747?

Maybe. Wake vortices tend to sink down and out. But, they are affected by prevailing winds, too.

It would take a more sophisticated computer model than I could do in a reasonable amount of time. I hope that someone is doing so, though.

6 posted on 11/16/2001 1:18:49 PM PST by justlurking
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To: justlurking
Wake vortices tend to sink down and out. But, they are affected by prevailing winds, too.

Actually, they ARE the wind -- so to speak. That is, wake turbulence is a local disturbance in the mass of air that is moving with respect to the ground and gives rise to the concept of wind.

In addition, to keep a plane up, air has to move downward. Of course, this creates a low pressure above, which then sucks in air, hence you get a circulating flow -- but it must drift downward until it is supported by the surface of the earth, which of course is non-fluid.

But yeah, downward, outward, and carried with the wind.

19 posted on 11/16/2001 1:19:07 PM PST by jlogajan
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