As for as the aerobird challenger, i know nothing. As far as the wind on an airplane, I can shed some light there. How many volumes do you need?
The wind in the air is like the water in a river, or on a calm day as the water in a small lake. Not to get into pressure gradients and the sciences of airflow, let's just say that air is like the river. In deep pools and wide areas the flow is smooth and steady. In narrow areas, shallow areas and/or areas of obstructions the flow changes direction around obstructions, becomes turbulent and can even mess things up a bit.
In the modeler's small world a tree, a house or small obstruction can provide a significant turbulent action to a rather small breeze. On some days, even though there isn't much wind, where the sun warms the surface, and creates thermals (rising air masses that do not cool at the rate of the surrounding air) there can be areas of significant low altitude turbulence. Each cumulus cloud marks where a thermal air mass is condensing.

As far as the airplane and flowing wind are concerned, the airplane flies within the air mass. While the airplane flies at some TRUE airspeed (TAS) within that mass, the airplane tracks over the ground at a vector resultant of the TAS vector (TAS and time along the true heading of the airplane) and the wind vector defined by from the wind direction to where the wind is blowing and the same time. The difference between the ground vector (Ground speed and track) and the air vector (True Heading and TAS) defines the drift angle of the airplane in going from A to B.

Your model is flying downwind, level at a given speed. The TAS remains constant yet you the observer can only see the groundspeed. (Groundspeed (GS) is TAS + tailwind component or TAS - Headwind component of the wind vector.) When you turn around and come back, your model appears to have slowed down. Yes the GS has slowed down, but the TAS is still constant. Example: Your model flies a TAS of 50mph. The wind is from the south at 10 mph. You fly north. Your GS is 60 mph. Turn back south and your GS slows to 40 mph. The airplane does not change its airspeed. The airplane flies and stalls based on AIRSPEED, another kind of airspeed normally called Indicated Air Speed (IAS) which is a measure of molecules of air over the wing surfaces. This varies for any TAS due to pressure altitude, temperature, and several other factors in a smaller way. RC modelers seldom need to consider that except for those in high country. Consider that the machine stalls at thee same IAS while the TAS increases about 2% per thousand feet in alt. for any given IAS.

The crosswind component of the wind vector will displace the aircraft from its heading vector by the vector amount for a given time. For example flying south with an east wind of 10mph will displace the aircraft to the west 10 miles in one hour. To correct you must head into the east by some degree. An airplane flying at 60 mph will have to correct about 10° to the east to compensate for that 10 mile displacement where an airplane flying 120 mph would only need 5° of heading change to correct for the "drift".
That explains why when flying those parallel race tracks around the flying field, your airplane does not always go in the direction which you point it.
For an easy method to get a quick idea of the drift angle needed, estimate your TAS. Pick a number. Divide the TAS by 60. That gives you the degrees required for 1 KNOT -- 1 mph is close enough -- of cross wind. Estimate your crosswind and multiply it by the degrees from above. That is your correction. Example: TAS = 90 mph. 90/60 =1.5, 1.5 x 10 mph Xwind and you have a needed 15° correction to maintain track. Plenty close for RC work and it worked for me in jets when there was no fancy navigation equipment. [8D]

Many RC pilots have a problem landing in crosswinds due to the fact that they don't realize that as you slow down for the touchdown the drift angle becomes much larger thus requiring corrections. Yet sometimes the surface air isn't moving nearly as fast as the air some 50 ft. up so you have to take it as you find it. Welcome to RC.


Another factor often overlooked by the RC pilot is that if you have a fairly strong breeze along the flight path, and you start a 180° turn around, if such is a headwind, then the aircraft will start actually moving toward you once the model has turned 90° minus the turn drift angle. Starting a turn with a tailwind, the model continues moving away from you until the model has completed 90° of turn PLUS the drift angle at that point of the turn. A slow trainer sometimes does not start a return toward you from a downwind turn until the model is actually pointing directly back.

I have seen RC pilots completely loose slow models simply because they would not control the heading, get the nose down to attain the highest possible TAS and fly directly back to the runway area. I have seen pilots lose models because they tried to keep altitude and slow down during a deadstick, then the headwind was stronger than the TAS of the model or at least strong enough that they could not attain any GS to get back to the runway. There is only so much potential energy between a flying machine and the earth. One must use it wisely.