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Thread: Fuel Circles
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Old 19th January 2012 | 19:15
  #52 (permalink)  
gasax
 
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,235
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From: Niort
I'm not sure that you really do understand fuel circles.

What is the point of a technique which ignores wind and where the largest single input - fuel burn - is a gross approximation?

Last Saturday I flew a point to point flight of about 30 miles - it took me 2 hours because I took a pretty scenic route!

I took off with a wind of about 260/3kts. Midway the wind was about 210/12kts and when I landed it was 270/5kts. The bit in the middle would make the 'fuel circle' method hopelessly inaccurate. So too would the fact that I was so enjoying the view that I throttled back and used the wind to slope soar and loiter around the hills.

The critical aspect for light aircraft is that wind has a massive impact at 90kts. Last year I flew from my engineers back to my home base - ground speed for much of the flight - 45kts. On the ground it was about 260/25kts at 1000 foot very very much more - as shown by the GPS!

Calculating a set of range rings which are highly inaccurate simply does not seem to be a smart technique. Flying at 360 or 420 kts - ok I can ignore the wind flying at 90 kts it is one of the most significant inputs. Oh, along with the 'loud pedal'.
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