By9468840 wrote:
I agree. It is not like the aircraft turns from departure heading to downwind at an instant. It does so by gradually hence the airspeed remains practically uneffected.
Even if it did turn in an instant, it wouldn’t affect the airspeed as long as the wind was constant. Only wind shear would affect the airspeed.
ok I think the purpose of the original post got high jacked for long enough..
I try to create new threads out of off topic posts when the new topic is one of general interest to pilots.
Airborne_Again wrote:
No, that’s an old myth
No it’s not. Whenever there is a gradient in the wind, with respect to time or position, you will have effects like MD is describing. Wind shear is another name, but usually only describes strong horizontal gradients that can be dangerous for airliners. There are always gradients, even on flat surface, but in the mountains they are much stronger due to the terrain. In a flat landscape you can more or less forget about it, there is only “wind and gust” (most of the time, unless you are landing a glider).
I know what you mean. An aircraft will fly with the wind, like a boat on Amazonas, thus turning makes no difference to the aircraft in relation to the air mass. IMO this is a very stupid and dangerous picture to have, because a constant wind (in all directions and with respect to time) is an idealized situation that never exists in real life. This situation causes no problems. That’s the point about it, it causes no effect on the aircraft whatsoever, because the aircraft is also moving with the wind.
Gradients cause huge effects on the aircraft.
LeSving wrote:
Whenever there is a gradient in the wind, with respect to time or position,
…which is called “wind shear” — which I mentioned.
Are there any general tips for this?
Obviously if you have the climb performance to climb straight out then that’s the simplest option.
That’s probably the only general tip that works everywhere. Hence, Cub, RV or any other plane with good climb performance is a better choice.
That being said, we had a fatal accident a year ago in an RV that probably were caused by this very phenomenon although nothing official as of yet from the investigation.
