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Right front shot
Left front shot
Right side
Rotate!
This is appearently taken in very humid conditions as vapor trails are forming in the low pressure area over the top
of the wings.
Takeoff vapor
What you see here on the back of the wing is what makes it possible to spot-land this big airplane. On approach
to landing, the flaps are extended quite a bit, and the spoilers are raised a little. The flaps are positioned so that
the engine exhaust blows on them (that is why they are called blown flaps) and this allows some of the engine thrust to be
converted to lift. So if you adjust the throttles, you adjust the wing lift some. The spoilers destroy lift created
by the wing. They are initially set to be extended up slightly (as seen in the pic) but they can quickly extend up further
or retract. This can have a rapid effect on how much lift is being produced. So by varying the throttles and spoiler
position, the airplanes flightpath can be changed a lot faster than using normal flaps and not deploying the spoilers until
after touchdown. All this boils down to allowing the pilot to accurately land where he wants to.
Also visible are the extended slats on the leading edge of the wing. These allow for slower airspeeds when extended
forward and down.
C-17 wing components
This is basically a miniature tornado created by the way air flows into the engine when it is producing reverse thrust.
Reverse thrust vortex
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