Wind is your Freind
 

"3D" pilots like to fly on the extreme edge of the envelop, low and slow. But what amazes me is that winds over 5 mph tend to ground several of the "3D" guys at our field.

In my humble opinion, wind adds an exciting dimension to flying. I like to see a hover all the way through the downwind leg and a nice 0mph harrier landing into the wind. I personally don't have the skills for it but I do fly the best I know how in the wind, like setting up a nice 45 degree crab angle approach and try to end up on the runway when I'm finished.

Let's hear some wind opinions and for god sakes, get out and play with the elements!

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

For sure I love flying in any flyable condition. Shoot this past Sunday the winds were a CONSTANT 10-15mph. I flew my 4-1/2lb Morris Topcap profile around for 8 flights, doing everything.

I don't mind the wind at all. Its just different

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

wind makes all flying great, it also make flyers abetter pilot, its easy to do stuff in no wnd, give them a gentel breese they will ground themselves to the point wen they can fly in wind! do i make sence!>!??!?!?!?

i personally fnd the wing great, easyer to hover and stuff like that, but it makes watching amazing pilots amzinger (is that a word??? is now!!!). on saturday i whent to a show and i was watching somebody rolling harrier a 50% (!!!) pitts special into wind with NO FORWARD MOVEMENT!!!!! amazing to watch.

wind just adds another skill to a pilots caperbillity, its all well and good doing something in dead calm then not being able to do it in a little gust of wind

ive flown my Flip (dead now[:o]) in 35mph winds, i woulnt normally do this but it was a club compotition. needless to say it was hard! i also have flown my blade (shocky thing) in winds up to about 10mph! its not fun, but its a chalange.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

More amazing.:D

Wind is great, especially with small strips you need it to land slow, someone with a shocky came some time ago and flew into wind, its adds a litte fun when you roll with no forward movement. (No not torque roll you know what I mean)

rollers in wind
 

It's good practice to get a nice open space with a smooth wind (10 or 15 mph) and just "lean" your TR into the wind, and make it a roller. I spent several weeks last fall practiceing it, cause we had SO much wind, and I just had no choice if I wanted to fly often.

I think it's really good practice to get a small bird (40 size) to do a roller into the wind, as it turns slowly suspended at a 30 to 45% angle. The biggest problem I have with this is negotiating turbulence, as the plane will lunge up or down if I don't react quickly enough with the throttle or other surface control to balance the change.

Someday I will take the plunge and get a bigger bird, and that will help a lot with smoothness, but for practice, I think the smaller ones are best. Trying to handle wiind will when flying precision moves makes you a much better pilot all around.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Wind IS great, but as with everything, too much can ruin the flying weather.

Landed a Harrier on Sunday with 12 MPH winds and snapped the tail gear off. Great landing, but the wind dropped at the wrong time.

Lefty

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

I was bringing in my UCANDO with 10mph gusts blowing at a 45deg angle to the runway, I had it in perfect position, 15 feet high with no speed and then the wind quit. The nose dropped and I pulled up and up and up, it finally flattened out just before it hit. I flattened the gear a little but no biggie. That is the only drawback to pulling power all the way back and letting the wind fly you. If it quits, you ain't flyin no more.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Wind is fun when you are just having fun, but not so good for practising schedules and trying new 3d manuvers, because turbulence starts to come into play.

sometimes in the past i have lost a plane flying in too windy weather because of this, so if i have any doubts in flying, its a building day, not a flying day;)

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

I've been flying for almost 3 years now. Recently, it has been more windy than average and I realized that if you don't learn to fly in the wind, you don't fly much. So I tried really hard to practice using the rudder more and use the wind to my advantage and guess what? I now don't mind flying in winds of 15, 20, 25 miles per hour. Last Saturday I flew in pretty gusty conditions. When I got home, I checked the Weather Bug and we had gusts of 32 mph and an average wind of 14mph. And I was flying a Twist!

Later all,
Jim

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

I was always afraid of wind untill a friend taught me to fly on a slope with a motorless glider in 30mph wind. this training was a huge breakthrough for me in learning 3d. flying a glider using air power for lift, learning how to pin it against the wave, learning to rise by using down elevator rather than up. learning to recover from stalls with no power, since everything moves in slow motion you learn how to be more patient and hold inputs at multi points and release slowly on the back side rather than to pump sticks. since you are continuously flying a glider in high wind there is no time to relax or get lazy on the sticks - just like flying 3d. one day we had a steady wind of 55 mph, I had to climb out the back door of van because I could not open the side door into wind. I put on my ski goggles and ear plugs. holding my 3m glider in one hand just in front of wing and my radio with other, I was walking horizontal to ground, it felt like I would leave the ground, my feet were loosing traction as I struggled to the edge of slope. I looked over at my budy standing next to me - his lips were moving but I could not hear anything. my all carbon fiber glider was flaping like a bird, I could barely hold it steady, I looked down at radio - it was on, all switches were right but I noticed that the entena was wrapped around my body ready to snap off - I held the radio at an angle with the wind to keep the entena attatched. I had my elevator trim all the way forward or down for launch. I let it go - it went about 4 feet in front and stopped very calm and smooth, I pushed forward (down) on the elevator stick, the tail came up - nose down and my glider went straight up out of sight. I flew for about 45 minutes - giant 1/4 mile loops, full rolling circles, giant stall turns with rolls, high speed passes over 150mph. it was the most fun I have ever had in rc. when flying in high wind with 3d power plane you actually use the wind power rather than prop, you can land/take off verticle. fly backwards while rolling. I like to surf the wave rolling horizontal along the face. wind flying is another dimention in rc just like 3d, dynamic soaring, etc. next time it is windy grab a beater and practice, eventually wind will be no big deal just a different set of manuvers.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

well, i just wanted to add my opinion....
well, im a good pilot, i guess i can say that.. i fly a funtana everything stock with a 61fx engine.. and i perosonally find that flying in 15mph wind is the same as flying at 1-3 mph wind; ecept for the landings, torke rools and elevator manuever...

well, 1st let me tell u that i can do almost all 3d maneuver, all the basic 3d as blender, knife edge spin, waterfall, etc is easy in wind or no wind, i can do rolling harrier too, i always do it at about 12ft high, starting higher than that and getting it closer to the ground little by little, i find that rolling harrier is just a little more sentitive when it is really windy, but no big diference when is calm or windy...

elevator, the plane fly backwards when too windy... but the biggest diference i find is when i do torke rool or hovering... when no wind i can tork rool at 1ft off the ground with my eyes close, but more than 5mph wind, things can get really dangerous if u r not carefull...

1st thing to torke rool with wind is to never cut the power too much when u want it to come to a stop (when there is no wind, when pulling the plane vertical, u can cut the power completly until the plane gets to a complete stop and then add power to hover it, in all that transition, u need very little correction to mantain the plane vetical)...but with wind, if u cut the power completly, just before the plane gets to a complete stop, there is no control over the tail and the plane tends to drop out of the hover with no control.. so u add full power, but in that 1.5-2 secs of transition that the engine takes to rpm up, uve already droped about 9ft if u come out with tail wind, and if u start to close to the ground, ucan crash... it happend to me...

in this pic, i just pulled it to a hover. it started good, but 1 sec later, a big gust came and pushed me all the way around, and i had to come out of it with tail wind..... it toke me less than 1 sec to add full power, but the plane drop all the way down with a perfect stable harrier or elevator and i landed it from torke rool..... i consider that as a crash althought nothing happened to the plane.. and this is the biggest problem i find in torke roolong with wind.....

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

here i was tork rolling with less than 5mph wind...

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

well, i just have to say that when it is windy, u cant really torke rool in 1 place, the wind would push u all the way back untill it gets too far and u have to abort before it gets too far and u cant do corrections because u dont see it well..

the other thing is 15mph wind is really a lot of wind, i can do backward rolling harriers with this wind, so i think that 30-50 mph wind is a little too exagerate, it would be a storm, but i may be mistaken..... plz no ofence to anyone, im just not sure how much wind is usually really windy, but i think in my club, the windyest it gets its to 20mph wind and all the tables and chairs fly around!!!!!!!

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

i like to fly shock fliers int 10-15 wind. its VERY challenging. especially around my house its very turbulent.
its like surfing a 30 ft wave in hawaii.(i haveno idea what thats like but i betit hurts when you wipe out.

of course sometimes you end up with granulated shockfliers but that is what epoxy is for.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

i to like flying in windy weather especially f3a practicing cos you never know what the comp day is gonna be like,and then your prepared.same with 3d you can actually use the wind to your advantage stationary rolls, stationary knifeedge etc,all good fun:D

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Like the post title says, Wind is your friend. If you don't learn how to fly in it you don't fly much. On the other hand, Turbulence is your enemy. Our local field is small and tight. We overfly a swamp that's surrounded with trees. The only break in the tree line is behind our runway and we've generally got a 90 degree crosswind into or out of the swamp if the wind's blowing. Had a 30 inch electric up one day in 10-15, made a straight and level full power pass right down the runway at about 10 feet. As soon as the plane got into the opening in the tree line it dropped 10 feet and pancaked right on the centerline. Had my Sledge up Saturday and the crosswind started kicking up. Put it up and the wind got nastier, flew it around for a while and got to the point where I was spending all of my time just trying to keep the plane airborne. Decided I wasn't having a lot of fun so I decided to land. Set up a nice approach on a 45 to keep it out of the rollers coming off the top of the trees. Soon as the plane got into the break in the tree line it made an immediate left and put itself 4 foot up in a bush, didn't hurt anything, but I figured that was enough (new 3D move, Perching). When we do get a decent wind that's down the runway it actually makes our postage stamp a lot easier to land on, but those days are few and far between. I've been there when the wind was only 5 or 6 and the turbulence over the swamp makes anything down low almost impossible, other times it's 10 to 15 but smooth as glass.

Turbulence sucks (literally)

Mike

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Speaking of wind check this out. This is QQ and his Yak with VERY windy conditions. Just posted it on the QQ thread, but it fits here too.

QQ 72" Yak-54 video

[link=http://www.flybuder.com/aeroflyvids/qqxfc.wmv]CLICK HERE TO VIEW - 15 MB WMV[/link]

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

I was wondering what the wind was in that vid

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Look at who's flying it. Enough said!;)

I completely agree about wind being your friend and about turbulence being your enemy... There's nothing more fun than flying with a moderate, constant and steady wind. The possiblities of new maneuvers are greater!! Even hovering is more fun, since it can be done horizontaly too...:D:D
But get a gusty day with lots of turbulence, straight and level flight will seem harder than hovering on a windless day. You are forced to share your plane's guidance controls with the wind, which is not something good.:D

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Knife Edge Hover

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

I'm very proud of my wind

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

The only way to learn to fly in the wind is get out there and do it! Now don't start with your $1800 plane, but throw a SPA3D together out of coroplast and aluminum and go have a ball! If it ain't blowin 20 mph, it's too calm!!:D:D Great harriers, and you WILL learn to fly rudder. It amazes me how many guys can't land straight down the runway with a steady 15 mph cross wind. They just don't know how to use the left stick. We've had lousy flying weather this year in Tennessee. I bet we haven't had 3 or 4 days of flying since March with the winds less than 15 mph. You either learn to fly in it, or you don't fly.:D

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

you mean to tell that there are places where the wind doesn't blow? I am on my way. Just kidding, sorta, around here (SD, MN border)the only time the wind doesn't blow is the two to three hours just after sunrise and before sunset, so if you want to fly more than three hours or at the butt crack of dawn you fly in the wind. its good for you.

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

with the wind yesterday on the east coast of the UK i was able to rolling harrier BACKWARDS!

RE: Wind is your Freind
 

Was doing them at Woodspings on the saturday. Trying to fly a shokcy as close to the tent as poss. to shelter it from the strong winds was good fun!