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What is the "bump" you get when flying an accurate 360 orbit?

Is it hitting your wake turbulence, or is it just hitting the propwash?

One glider pilot says you never get it in gliders, but then in a glider you would be hard pushed to do a 360 all at the same altitude

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

My PPL instructors told me it is the wake turbulence.

ELLX

Wake turbulence. Powered aircraft are also substantially heavier than gliders and produce more wake.

EGTK Oxford

Yeah, there’s a wake off any plane, and you can hit it and go bump. Here’s a visual: It was a beautiful autumn morning, with mist in my neighbour’s field, so I went for a wake turbulence run parallel to my runway in my 150. The wake remained long enough for me to climb away, turn back and photograph it

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

That’s a beautiful picture!

ESME, ESMS

Great photo.

Nice shot with nice idea , thanks for sharing.

Fly , Cycle and Run
LTBJ,LTFB, Turkey

Ah very nice ! That’s something you can read about in “Fate is the hunter” – when fog was preventing them from landing, they used to make lower and lower approaches and flypasts until it cleared it.

EGTF, LFTF

You do get prop wash in gliders when under tow, roughly 5-25 degres behind the tug aircraft

Wake turbulences from wing vortices depends if you fly at low speeds?

I agree with JasonC you should get less in gliders due to the high aspect ratio and weight, but also this could be due to the loss of height (50ft on each 360 turn)

Last Edited by Ibra at 08 Dec 11:30
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

It’s fun to do a 360 and feel that bump once in a while. At least it makes you feel like you flew something that resembled a circle. But, wait, don’t wakes drift down and feeling it means you’ve lost altitude?

Last Edited by aart at 08 Dec 16:54
Private field, Mallorca, Spain
13 Posts
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