I am using the system my FTO teaches and trying to keep things simple as the clever people on here are advising! So, I use 2-3 x single drift and a head or tail wind adjustment of 1 sec per knot. I fly the DA42 which has a nifty wind vector display, which seems to be pretty accurate, meaning you can update your pre-flight planning whilst on the hoof, as it were!
Take a 40 knot wind 30 degrees off your hold axis of 214. Max drift in a DA42 flying on one engine at 120 knots would be something like 20 degrees. Drift inbound would be about 10 degrees in this case. Given the wind is 30 or more degrees off the hold axis, we're taught to use 3 x single drift, giving 30 degrees into wind correction and an outbound heading of 004.
And for how long do we keep the outbound heading from abeam the beacon? Well, we're taught to start with a 60 second outbound leg and then deduct the headwind you experienced on the inbound track. In this example you would experience about 35 knots of headwind, so according to the 'system' you would have an outbound leg timed at 25 seconds!
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I just tried this on Rant XL and you get a gate of 50 degrees and a hold timing of just under 4 minutes despite a large overshoot requiring a big interception angle to the inbound track
Best I could manage on Rant before boredom near killed me was an outbound heading of 349 degrees - er, that's 4.5 x single drift
- with an outbound time of 27 seconds - okay, near enough the correct amount of headwind - which gave a gate of 59 degrees but a hold time of precisely 4 minutes
. Of course, this is using Rate 1 turns at 120 knots.
So, given these figures, what I want to know is how on earth you get yourself on to the inbound track without an overshoot, while keeping to a 4 minute hold, and remaining within the constraints of the 3 x single drift 'system'? Surely you can't!?
PS: Don't forget, Gents, that when you're on test you only do one hold unless our first one is brilliant - in which case the Examiner may think you were lucky - or rubbish - in which case the Examiner may feel sorry for you - and let you do a second one.