3 Movie questions.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Hi friends,

you know, movies always make me thinking about real life and simulation reality of FS.

1. "Turbulence" with Ray Liotta as the bad guy.

This is the best movie I have ever seen, where the Stewardess lands a 747. There wan an interesting moment in the movie:
The plane flew without a pilot, in a storm, and it was bouncing. When it started to fall from the sky, at a given angle, suddenly autopilot and Flight Director turned on, and leveled the plane. Why is it not happening in FS? Why can I set a so high climbing rate, that the plane lost speed and falling down? Why autopilot does not respond anything, but tries to keep the descending rate...it should know, that it is impossible?

2. "Avro Arrow" with Dan Aykroyd as the chairman.

This was probably the best historical/aviation movie. The Avro Arrow was a supersonic interceptor back in the 60s, that was never put on duty. There was an interesting moment here too:
When the plane reached M1.0 on a test flight, there was a big boom and it become suddenly silent in the cockpit. Testpilot said: over M1.0 you cannot hear the engine noise, as it is behind you. The sound cannot reach you, as you fly faster than the sound. If it was true, why it does not happening in FS?

3. F-14 Tomcat video.

An F-14 Tomcat flies faster than sound on a show:
http://www.eng.vt.edu/fluids/msc/gallery/conden/f14.mpeg

Can someone explain me, what the hell is happening there with the air? What are those strange, fastly appearing and disappearing clouds?

Thanks for help and ideas

[EHM-1358 Tim]

Maybe tihngs dont happen in FS because uts only a sim

Oh and the F-14, thats to do with the humidity.

[EHM-0962 Zhen Yi]

Hmm......the first feature sounds like a safety feature built into the autopilot.....airbus planes have it as far as i know.....but i'm not sure whether it works in that way.....somehow safety systems are not modelled in FS......the mach one fact is definitely true. a pity that fs does not model it as well.......as for the F-14, i agree it probably has to do with humidity, condensation of water vapour and maybe vortexes and turbulences generated by the aircraft's movement through the air

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Thanks for the answers. For the F-14, it shows a supersonic boom, but I would like to understand the physics of that event.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

2 more question:

1. Why does it happen that a flight takes different time forward, than reward...I mean the difference between westbound and eastbound flights. Does it something to do with the spin of Earth, or the "Great Western Wind" ?

2. On the wings of the big birds, usually there is a dark grey wide stripe in the middle of the wing along its length. This stripe is sometimes dark, sometimes light, sometimes blueish, sometimes greenish... depends on the airline that uses the plane. What this stripe is for, and why its color can be selected when purchasing the plane?

[EHM-0001 Gergely]

1. It's because of the winds. The wind speed is due to the Earth's rotation, the Earth and its athmosphere rotating at different speeds.

Gergely

[EHM-0005 Maarten]

My vote goes to the "Great Western Wind"

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Perhaps these are the same I learnt that, because of the rotation, there is a constant western wind in the higher atmosphere...I called that the Great Western Wind, although I do not know if it had a better name

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

1 : There isn't that security system on boeings, on airbus maybe, but I don't think the autopilot would get on by itself.
2 : True, but when you are inside the airplane you still ear the engine itself, not the noise of the hot jet anymore.
3 : This is due to the "wall of sound" transition, it makes a very high pressure cone (you can see in the video) that the plane goes through, when the air is saturated with humidity the ambient humidity condensates in the areas where the pressure is high enough, since the temperature at which a gaz condensates back to the liquid state decreases with pressure increase (when you cook green vegetables in a high pressure cooking pot it's the same phenomen. You raise the pressure so that there will be vapor under 100°C, that is normally not possible)

For the east / west difference, it's been answered, winds.
It's called the Coriolis force, caused by the rotation of the globe.
There are jetsreams too, etc...

For the wing stuff... Not sure that's what  you are talking about, but I think you are talking about the marked area of the wing you can step on without damaging it and its components.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Oh, thanks a lot!

Great feedback. I thought the same about the pressure/humidity but I was not sure.

But Coriolis? As I know the Coriolis force attacks an object when it leaves constant speed on a circle track and start to accelerate or decelarate.

Yes, I thought the STEP / NO STEP zone, which is in the middle of the wing top, along the wings length. Why is it darkgrey, or have a selectable color?

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

For the coriolis.. huh ?
For the wing step area, no clue, probably as long as it's visible enough the airline can choose the color that suits the livery better....