Well, the more I delve into the topic, the more are chances to ask noob questions, as you can see if you follow up my posting statistics lately.
So, please bear with me!
First things first... I'm writing a program which needs to calculate altitude of an aircraft at each checkpoint until it reaches the cruising altitude. Let's assume that a pilot chooses to climb at best rate-of-climb speed (Vy). And here is a sample scenario:
Airfield's pressure altitude (QNH) -> 1,500 ft
Distance to the 1st checkpoint (S) -> 10 nm
Airspeed taken from POH (Vy) -> 78 KIAS
Climb rate -> 1010 fpm
Now, to find the altitude at next checkpoint I would simply do the following and wouldn't bother posting here:
Time to reach the checkpoint -> 10 nm / 78 KIAS = ~7.69 min
Altitude -> 1,500 ft + (1010 fpm x 7.69 min) = ~9,270 ft
But... for
accuracy sake, I need to know the ground speed (GS) of an aircraft which, in turn, depends on TAS derived from IAS using... altitude (!) as one of the variables.
Looks like a chicken-and-egg problem to me, doesn't it!
Again, I could keep the calculations simple using the famous "2% increase per 1K of altitude" rule-of-thumb for the speed. But I need your help to explore all available methods to get rid of altitude-speed dependency before I move on.
So, I will highly appreciate any help!!! Thanks!