Understanding Jet Engine Mechanics

Jeff Nelson, followed by Russ Lozuka.

Yeah.

Good, uh, morning.

Welcome.

As you can see, I was a, uh, airline pilot

and, uh,

nine years as a instructor, uh, last seven as a lead

instructor at the, uh, largest flight academy in, uh, the world.

Uh, part of that job was teaching all these pilots about

engines

and, uh, weather.

Um, oh, the pink here is, uh, left over

from the Fourth of July. It was supposed...

Um, this jet engine is very simple.

It, uh, it sucks,

um, it compresses, it bangs, and it blows.

And so what happens is these turbines suck the air in,

increasing the amount of

density of the air. It goes into a ch- a combustion

chamber,

where it's, uh, heated and expands again, comes out

as thrust at a very high temperature, similar to when you blow up a

balloon and you let the balloon go, and it goes straight, you know,

flying off.

Now, when that hot air e- exits the tailpipe, um,

this occurs, um, the contrails, not the chemical, the

contrails occur because of cold air, minus 30.

It takes a high altitude, around 30,000 feet plus,

and that air turns to... There's, um, carbon dioxide and

water vapor in that exhaust. That turns to ice crystals,

and that's what you see, the white stream behind it.

Those white crystals, uh, of ice, um,

um, warm up, dissolve, and the smoke goes away,

and it never lasts more than a minute.

Usually, it's in seconds, depending outside air conditions.

What we're seeing now, and I first could not believe it, and

I started looking at the skies, and these are not normal.

They're not natural.

There's something going on. I don't know who it is

or why they're doing it.

All I can testify is it's not natural, and it's not normal.

It's gotta be some outside influence doing that.