Simviation Forums

Folks, I'm new to this board. I was an Eastern Air Lines pilot for 31 years and had flown both the A300 and the L1011 when I left three years before my age would have required it.

In the mid nineteen-sixties, there was a spate of accidents in the lower tier of the US in which large jet aircraft (both passenger and military) were literally falling out of the sky on a somewhat regular basis. At that time, I wrote a paper that suggested an explanation for the problem. Eastern published it in its internal newsletter but, so far as I know, it never went much farther. Their training, however, added some procedures that incorporated some of the suggestions I had made to avoid the problem.

Having read all I could find (so far) about Air France's recent disaster over the Atlantic, I'm persuaded that my theory might explain it. Nothing I have read rules it out. I've sent copies of my old (and not-all-that-well-written) thesis to Air France's investigating body but never even received an acknowledgment.

I'm looking for a computer simulator that can be used to test this theory. It has to do with the formation of "eddies" aloft, penetration of those hyper-swift currents of air, the subsequent loss of lift as momentum carries the aircraft out of those currents, and the subsequent reaction of the aircraft when the airfoils are deprived of that lift.

Is there a simulator (preferably an Airbus) among those in the library of this organization that I can download and create this scenario with reasonably realistic and recordable results? Better yet, might i be able to focus on specific instruments during the course of the session?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Ellis

I have no input that can help you, but this is an interesting subject.  Ive been trying to learn this flight sim thingie for a number of years now.  One problem I kept having was flying into storm fronts and getting a "Aircraft Overstressed" damage and crash failure.  Someone pointed out that you dont just fly full bore into a thunder storm.  Something about wings and tail surfaces getting ripped right off or some such thing...

And I have to say, your subject and its objective is a lot better than the wack job who was asking here for a better "chemical engine" so he could re-create the 9/11 crashes in FSX or 2004!  That was just plain wacked!  He got banned I think.

Welcome to the forum.  If anyone can help you as to wether or not FSX can help you with your test, these folks can

Do you feel that the Airfrance downing into the Atlantic might have had something to do with storm front entry?  Or some such?

I don't fly any airbus other then the default A321 so I am unable to recommend one for download. However the only problem I see with you testing this theory is the limitations of FSX's weather generation. It doesn't model the atmosphere like it is in real life (a fluid) but rather just sets parameters that will mimic common phenomenons. So creating this eddie will be the hardest part of the testing.  You can set the sim to give you a 30kt headwind then set the next weather station to give you a 30 kt tailwind but it wont react like an eddie I would think.

HI Ellis and welcome to the forum.

I think what you need to look at is the weather in FSX rather than an aircraft in particular. It is certainly true that some aircraft handle a lot more realistically than others but setting up FSX weather is your 1st consideration I think.

Have you looked at this already?

Another problem you may have is I doubt very much if any Air Bus flight model available for FSX will have Manoeuvre Load alleviation,

As far as weather, I heard that a payware program called "active sky" might be your best bet for accurate weather

Flight Simulator X,http://realenvironmentxtreme.com/; and some airbus payware, which is high quality airplanes you can purchase on a disc or download them directly to your computer.

Thanks to all of you who responded. Sorry I didn't get back here sooner. Had some computer problems that only just got resolved.

To sum up what you all have suggested: the parameters probably aren't adequate...either the weather or even the aircraft...to test my theory here. I haven't tried any of them yet... been too busy. But, I can look and see.

The weather is probably the most critical issue. And, to answer your questions about the proposal, the eddies I would try to simulate are large. Likely they would be caused in the fringes of the jet stream because eddies are caused by the "friction" of two bodies of water/air that are traveling at dissimilar speeds. And the circular velocity would be far greater than the speed of either of the two masses of water/air.

Moreover, because the movement would be lateral and not have much of a vertical component, there would be no adiabatic change to produce any visible sign, although there could be clouds and severe weather associated with either of the air masses. Nor would it have formed close enough to the ground to have picked up dust or other debris to contribute to its visibility.

Because the area this "eddy" would cover a good bit of real estate at altitude, the manifestation of this in the cockpit would be to discover, as you were climbing through it, that your rate of climb would increase as your momentum carried you into the left quadrant (assuming a counter-clockwise rotation) and you maintained your climb airspeed.

If on autopilot, the airspeed would be the controlling factor, so your rate of climb would increase as the increase in velocity of your relative wind over the airfoil increased the lift (geometrically).

An effort to maintain both rate of climb and airspeed would call for power reduction and down trim. (If the Airbus were on both autopilot and autothrottle (which most operators train not to use, but which caution is sometimes ignored), the result might be insidious and difficult to observe