Posted on 11/16/2001 1:19:06 PM PST by The Magical Mischief Tour
This is Bull $h!t!!!
The NTSB is LYING like rugs!!!
NTSB dude just claimed that .3 to .8 g's encountered during the wake encounter caused the Airbus to break up in flight...
Even a male reported asked "is this even possible".
"Isn't this normal bumping encountered when flying?"
Even the media don't believe them!!!!!
One wonders if something like this might have happened. The aircraft encountered the wake and the data recorders measured the 0.3 to 0.8 acceleration. This acceleration is insufficient to cause separation of the stabilizer and is consistent with other information about how the vortex may tend to throw the aircraft out of the wake. However, the vortex impinging upon the rudder caused it to begin to oscillate. The computer read this as some kind of unusual situation and began to send a series of counter commands at high rate. This might cause a high amplitude, high frequency vibration to be transmitted to the structure connecting the stabilizer to the tail inducing a failure in these connectors. There could even be some kind of a feed back loop that might persist after the aircraft exited the wake. In effect, what I'm saying is that the computer might have gone nuts when it encountered something outside it's program.
Don't know if this makes sense to others but it's at least as good a theory as most I've seen here. I agree with most folks here that 0.3 to 0.8 gs should be insufficient to cause separation, but I think a lot of folks should remember that accelerations have both magnitudes, directions, and in the case of vibrations a frequency. 0.8 gs might not be much of a problem in a steady load, but it can cause problems if it is not steady, but has a frequency of many hertz, ie, it's off and on very rapidly.
I knew that I should have done the whole calculation instead of "eyeballing" it. So, let's do this right:
0.3g = 9.6 ft/sec^2
9.6 ft/sec^2 * 40 ft = 384 (ft/sec)^2?
sqrt(384) = 19.60 ft/sec
19.60 ft/sec = 13.36 miles/hour
Better?
On the one hand, they're the people who are most likely to consider the Federal government totally and completely incompetent...
On the other hand, the various conspiracy theories require all kinds of various branches of the government to be almost perfectly competent in covering up various things...if TWA 800 was taken down by a Navy missle, the almost instant application of a consistent conspiracy to hide that fact and keep anyone from talking is one of the most brilliant and coordinated governmental actions ever. If FDR purposely allowed the Pearl Harbor attack, he's one of the greatest geniuses of all time and not only had OUR military dancing like puppets on a string, he was able to manipulate the Japanese into doing exactly what he wanted when he wanted.
I will believe that this theory is credible and the NTSB/FAA is serious about airline safety if and when I see such an order. Until then, I see no reason why I should set foot on another commercial airline flight.
Around here, most people do 30mph to 35mph around the ones marked 20mph and 35mph to 40mph around the ones marked 25mph. Generally that's in the 0.5g to 0.6g range.
Do you mean 3tenths of a G and 8tenths of a G or 3 G's and 8 G's? 3 tenths is next to nothing as is 8 tenths. That is less than 1 G which is normal unexcellerated flight loading. 3G's up to 8 G's could easily cause a commercial jet to dissasemble as they are not stressed for that high a sustained load. A matter of physics..in a 60 degree coordinated banked turn the g loading is 2 g's. In a 90 degree banked coordinated turn the G loading is infinite!
1. That was a fighter, not a commercial airliner. It's like comparing sports cars versus moving vans. Try taking a sharp turn fast in a moving van and see how fast the trailer separates from the cab.
2. You have described positive and negative G's, not lateral G's. Planes are designed to take pos/neg G's well, not lateral G's. You normally only get high lateral G's when attempting to fly the plane sideways.
This plot is north up (0/360 degrees), runway 31 is pointing at/near 310 degrees. Remember that AA 587 lags behind the JAL flight by 4-5 miles, or around two minutes.
This "wake turbulance" appears (to a know nothing like myself) to be a localized event along a flight path (although it's likely that it moves laterally depending on the prevailing winds and also, I've read that it has a tendency to "sink").
It tends to sink and spread outward from the path of the plane, in the absence of other influence. I don't have any information about how fast it usually dissipates. Earlier, someone reported that the prevailing winds at the surface were 11 knots from the southeast. That would tend to blow the wake vortices away from the AA flight, but we don't know what the winds aloft might have been.
I wasn't afraid so don't discount my memories to fear. I've flown in and out of O'Hare, LAX, DFW and Bush Intercontinental. There were always planes nearby...taking off or landing. I don't remember anything unusual that would have been caused by another aircraft.
If there was such a danger from nearby aircraft wouldn't there have been previous problems at other airporst and shouldn't the safety officials have done something about it before now?
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