Originally Posted by
FlightDetent
I heard once from a sailor that, unlike for landbound aviation, their wind is steady?
Lack of orography, it's purely the pressure gradients making things happen. Save for the turbulent layer with limited thickness.
Beg to differ. That is not the whole truth. How does that generalisation explain "cats paws" caused by down gusts on calm open waters? In any caselack of obstruction is not confined to open water. One of my tasks was trying to optimise anemometer siting on RAF airfields, subject to ATC and OPS constraints. Unsurprisingly a lot of airfields are very flat with minimal obstruction, and we tried to put the anemo where the gust ratios were least. Partly because the wind has a non-zero vertical vector there is no escaping gustiness in winds of any consequence. Sods Law says that the anemo ends up in a less than ideal place for aircraft landings/ take-offs.
Gust-ratio is a different matter: the more built-up the airfield is, the higher the ratio of gust to average wind. Can exceed 2 : 1 in cities. That does not extrapolate downwards all the way to a 1 : 1 ratio at sea.
As to whether this really matters is an airmanship subject, and the biggest thing I have ever flown is a boomerang, so am not qualified.