Originally Posted by
autoflight
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So what has windshear got to do with a simple downwind turn? In both cases the aircraft is flying into a reducing headwind and in the case of the downwind turn, we have set the circumstances to be eventually an equal tailwind.
In the downwind turn we are deliberately flying from an area with a headwind to an area with a tailwind. We are effectively creating our own windshear.
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No you are not. In the real winshear examples you are crossing wind gradients. In a turn to downwind in a constant wind you are not crossing any wind gradient. A wind gradinent is the fundamental element in windshear and it doesn’t exist in a turn in constant wind. To be more specific, if you are flying into a 20 knot wind out of the east and you turn west, you have not crossed any wind gradient, because gradient means change and the wind hasn’t changed one iota. The wind is still blowing the same 20 knots in the same direction, out of the east.
So, no, turning downwind is nothing like windshear