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Old 09-28-2010 | 07:06 PM
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c131frdave
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From: Ohio
Default RE: Effect of wind speed on EDF thrust

What he said. All aircraft have two relavent speeds: Ground Speed and True Airspeed. Ground speed is the speed of the aircraft relative to the ground. This speed has zero effect on the airplane except for the time it takes to get from point A to point B. True airspeed is the speed the airplane is traveling through the air relative to the air it is passing through. The engine gets no ram assistance because it will still need to rev up to the speed needed to match the wind speed.

It's a hard concept to visualize, but it's true. I've hovered a real Cessna 152 into the runway when I landed with a 50 knot headwind. I had to gun the gas to full power to make it to the runway on final approach, and then eased the throttle down as I hovered down to land. Going towards the runway with a 50 knot headwind required 100 knots at full throttle (airspeed indicator read 100 knots), while my ground speed was 50. When I got to the runway, I throttled back until the indicated airspeed red 50 knots (zero groundspeed). It requires quite a lot of power to go zero knots ground speed.