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Incredible photo of a USAF C-17 Globemaster III and the "Corridor-in-the-Clouds"

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FlyingJets

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Aug 24, 2004
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Incredible photo of a USAF C-17 Globemaster III and the "Corridor-in-the-Clouds"

Incredible photo of a USAF C-17 Globemaster III and the "Corridor-in-the-Clouds"

Thought about attaching this post to the August 25, 2004 Prandtl-Glauert singularity condensation clouds thread (http://forums.lightinfo.com/showthread.php?t=38686), however, this stunning photograph of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III military transport parting the clouds is just way too strange for that thread. Are their any active or former C-17 personnel/experts who are free to comment on the phenomenon?

October 10, 2004: C-17 Globemaster III Parting the Clouds
http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041010.htm

October 2004 archive, page with archive links
http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-2004-10-Fagualo-October.htm
http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw.htm

Though I marvel at the unexpected things these military jets trigger while in flight, this one, well...
 
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Are their any active or former C-17 personnel/experts who are free to comment on the phenomenon?


Its not a phenomenon exclusive to C-17's or military jets in general. Anything from Citations to 747's will do exactly the same thing on a scale relative to the amount of wingtip vortice they create.
 
Or a 172, for that matter. Or even a skydiver in a wingsuit.
 
VNugget said:
Or a 172, for that matter. Or even a skydiver in a wingsuit.
Hahaha...today we had a video guy who lost a "wing" while filming a tandem. Fortunately the tandem guy was one of those that could work "improv", so he turned circles with the video guy and the video turned out o.k. for the tandem customer. No vortices were made...so I'll spank myself for getting off topic! :)

To remain "on thread", I liked the pictures presented by the original poster, the C-17 looked majestic turning the cloud tops over. I like it! Thanks for posting the links to the images.
 
30, 20, Bam!

The C-17 definitely produces large wake vortices.
I've landed 45 seconds behind another C-17 in a formation landing. The wind was blowing just right and the vortices remained over the runway. At about 15' AGL, the vortices slammed us into the ground. Whoops.

Another vortice problem was that of personnel airdrop. When we tried to drop 200 lb mannequins from the plane, the vortices were causing them to do strange things. When mannequins were pushed out both doors, on both sides, they would collide in the middle behind the aircraft. We also found that if we tried to drop personnel in formation, the vortices of the preceeding aircraft created such a massive wake turbulence effect, that mannequins falling from trailing formation aircraft would sometimes get flipped inverted on their way down. Bummer if that happens to a real grunt. It tooks years of testing to figure out the right formation geometry so we could drop personnel in a 3 ship formation.

The picture looks pretty awesome, but as posted, the vortices produced are not unique to the C-17. Most any aircraft produces vortices at the wingtips, the magnitude varies.
 
i can't see any pictures with these links though..
 
I think every photo session with photographer Paul Bowen has produced photos from every manufacturer you can think of with the vortices thru the clouds. It's almost cliche.
 

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