ORIGINAL: AA5BY

Another concern is with the dreaded cross wind on the tail during base leg. That dreaded tail wind has gotten many of us who otherwise consider ourselves adequate pilots. Depending on the airframe, a number of designs will not be happy with the turn from base leg to final with a tail wind (cross wind in your face) and not putting extra speed on during such conditions can mean bad things in what some call coffin corner.

Part of the problem is that the downwind leg... isn't downwind and we don't feel the plane the same as typical and we may slow up to get it to drop altitude... then when turning base leg we don't add throttle and the airspeed gets precariously low... then that final turn bites.