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Old 12th October 2010 | 20:04
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Genghis the Engineer
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It always senses your local wind. Or strictly, the component parallel with the pitot head.

But, it has a bottom stop.

If the bottom stop is at 20, and you are pointed into a 15kn headwind, it'll lift off the bottom stop at 5.00000001kn groundspeed.

Roughly.


The other complication is that pitot-static systems are inaccurate below 1.3Vs and hellishly inaccurate below Vs.

So, whilst if it was perfect, in a 20kn headwind, indicating 10kn on the dial, you are reversing at 10kn - which is difficult in most light aeroplanes. This just illustrates that you can't trust anything an ASI tells you below Vs, and need to be very cautious below 1.3Vs.

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