Intuitive fred888: While the wind is blowing hard

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

While the wind is blowing hard

One of the things you are taught to do while going for your solo license as a pilot of a small plane is to try to fly Figure 8s in the air above a location without sliding along with the wind. This helps teach a pilot about what a wind does to a plane's trajectory.

For example, you could be flying straight towards your destination but you would never get there because the prevailing winds would be blowing you off course because where you are pointed in your plane is not necessarily where you will go.

So, you might have to face your plane into the wind partly and look at the ground as a reference point to arrive at the destination you want to arrive at.

This is less of a problem usually above 30,000 to 40,000 feet simply because the air is so thin it doesn't matter as much what it does at that altitude but you still have to watch your GPS and where you are headed always even in a jet passenger plane to arrive at the destination you are supposed to arrive at.

The problem of being blown sideways or with a tail wind or even a smaller plane cannot even make forward progress at all if the headwinds are too great. You could literally be trying to fly forward and be going backwards slowly in too high a head wind for some small planes.

So, as a private pilot going for your solo license you have to be in a cross wind and then fly in figure 8s to get used to compensating from winds from various directions and what that does to you where you wind up. It is the most obvious when making horizontal 8s with the plane trying to stay over the same bit of land like over a farm or something so this is why they teach you about this from direct experience in a cross wind.

The first time I experienced "Crabbing" into the wind I was piloting the plane by flying from Yucca Valley where my father's best friend owned a summer house and land back towards Los Angeles. At the time I was likely 9 or 10 years old but my father and his best friend wanted to teach me how to fly a plane in a cross wind without running into Mt. San Gorgonio which is around 11,000 feet in elevation. Since we were likely flying between 5000 and 7000 feet elevation I had to concentrate a lot in keeping going down that valley towards Los Angeles. I think we landed at Encino Airport or something like that. I was piloting a 1949 Stinson plane and the year was likely 1958 when I was about 10 years old then.

As a 10 year old I didn't take off the plane or land it but only flew it in the air. This was thought pretty normal for kids when I grew up whose friends or relatives were pilots. But, I did succeed in flying us to Los Angeles by crabbing into the wind so I could go forward rather than sideways in the cross wind.