PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Coping with wind in the hold
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Old 28th Nov 2008, 16:35
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pilotmike
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: UK
Posts: 572
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Just a quick 'back of a fag packet' answer as I've not analysed it carefully, but...

1. Use 3x drift outbound, which should give you a heading which will be closer to North. This is because you're into what could be called 'dimishing returns'. By this, I mean the more you offset your drift outbound, the greater the crosswind component becomes. Your chosen 016 heading gave a crosswind component of 49 degrees (or about 30 kts), yet the Northerly heading increases that crosswind angle to 65 degrees (or just over 35 kts).

The Northerly heading is required because you need to end up aproximately where you would have been after your final inbound turn with nil wind, though probably slightly upwind of it (closer to the beacon). Because of the Eastward drift during the turn, it requires you to be at your gate significantly West of the position you would have started this turn from in still air, therefore with a much 'wider' gate than usual - just as Mikehotel152 suggests.

2. For the time outbound, I'd be using less than 1 minute, say around 40 seconds. This is not so much because of the outbound tailwind (now you are heading nearer to North, this will be far less significant at around 15 kts than it was when heading 016), but rather it has to do with the expected 40 knot wind inbound, which will have around 35kts 'on the nose' component. Therefore your inbound leg will take over 1 minute, probably around 1 min 20 seconds, so reducing the time outbound by a similar amount is required.

I hope this helps. It is difficult to give hard and fast figures in these circumstances where the wind is strong and the drift angles are significant. You are looking for 'ballpark' figures which give you a good inbound track without overshoot or undershoot, and a total hold time of close to 4 minutes.

The key skill is to be able to make corrections at various points around the hold to compensate for errors as they are identified during the hold, and also to be able to make a second hold which is better, based on the overall errors discovered on the first one.

Happy holding!
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