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Pastimes : Nuke in a Box -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William H Huebl who wrote (60)	11/14/2001 4:54:18 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89

Regardless of definitions, the piece that fell off, the thing that we are referring to as the Vertical Stabilizer is the thing that sticks up vertically on the back of the plane like a fin that has the rudder attached to it. Unless the plane was flying perpendicular to the flight path of the plane that caused the wake turbulence, there would be no meaningful force on that fin that would cause it to break off. My kayak example is a good explanation of how the forces would be working on the object. Another would be to think of a free standing brick wall. I'll draw a picture with two different perspectives 1. \| 2. \|TTTTT\| The first perspective is looking at the narrow edge of the brick wall, the second is looking at the broad surface of the wall. Now, your task is to push one of the walls over so that it breaks at the ground. Me, I am going to push against wall number 2. If the wall is the vertical stabilizer and the wake turbulence is trying to push the wall over, it is going to have a tough time because it is trying to push over wall #1. The forces that a wake turbulance would exert are similar to that of what occurs naturally as a "rotor". This is basically a horizontal tornado and is formed on the leeward side of the tops of mountain ranges. Rotors and the turbulance will exert their force on a predominantly vertical axis. Therefore a flat object that is on the same axis (vertical) will not be affected as much as a flat surface on the horizontal axis. For a force to be sufficient to sheer off the vertical stabilizer, it would have had to come from a direction that was perpendicular to the flight path of the plane. Even then, my guess is that a wind force exerted on the vertical stabilizer fin thingie would just cause the tail end of the plane to push around rather than break the structure.