overpitched,
I think I can explain it...
From what a lot of you guys are telling me. Once I leave the ground I can manouver at will, upwind, downwind, crosswind, as slow or as fast as I like and it's not going to affect my aircrafts performance AT ALL
That's basically right. Except that if you get below 15-20 kts AIRSPEED, you will lose translational lift, and therefore require more power. You could do this by either slowing down, or due to losing a headwind. But it's AIRSPEED we're talking about, remember. If that doesn't change, neither will the performance.
the same people tell me I will however have a problem with wind shear, mountain waves, bumps, eddies, rubber duckies etc....
Yes, but for different reasons. If a downdraft in the mountains is dragging the aircraft down, it'll require more power to keep flying. In the event of windshear or sudden changes of direction, the ASI won't be accurate since the pitot tube can't cope (read earlier in thread for details) so you'll need to keep the ATTITUDE of your aircraft in order to maintain you AIRSPEED ...not always easy in the mountains, so you can come to grief. Bumps, eddies, mountain waves...all same thing. But this isn't due to complicated rocket science or aerodynamic principles relating to each blade being different...if it was I'd need a diagram and a lot of thought and probably wouldn't be posting about it in case I got it wrong.
It's simply due to downdrafts dragging you down, updrafts giving you a bit of free lift, and so on.
Well, I just re-read that and I think it's clear. But to summarise...
Performance won't alter unless you go below translational lift airspeed. Up and down drafts may affect your performance, for fairly obvious physical reasons.
Hmmm...if it's not that simple, someone had better tell me.