Originally Posted by
Brercrow
I want to make it clear that nowhere in my website do I say that groundspeed affects an aircraft in flight.
Read the link at post #102 and you will find a rational explanation of the effect of the wind during turning flight.
Stall spin crash burn - beware the downwind turn. But it is mostly pilot error.
I have looked at that site.
You state (when discussing an aircraft, in a steady wind, doing a constant rate turn)
1.3 If you think, at this point, that the wind is irrelevant to an aircraft in flight, remember that the spiral ground track is the vector sum of aircraft velocity relative to the air and wind-velocity relative to the ground. The acceleration of the aircraft is caused by forces acting on the aircraft and is seen as acceleration components of air-velocity and ground-velocity. In this context, the acceleration of the aircraft is affected by the wind.
I don't get what you are saying and it seems to be the crux of your argument.
1. You can only get an acceleration by applying a net force.
The only force, acting on the aircraft, "caused" by the earth, is gravity.
Yet you seem to argue that somehow the earth acts to accelerate the aircraft laterally. How? What force is this, where does it come from and how does it act on the aircraft?
2. That spiral path would appear exactly the same for any circling object if it was viewed from a constantly moving point of reference. No additional force is required to make the spiral path. (eg one of those conical pendulums dropping sand on paper - pull the paper at a constant rate and you get the very same spiral.) Not getting where any additional force is needed to get that pattern.