ORIGINAL: waydown2low

Mmmm, another can of worms. Wind is only relevant to the ground. A plane will have a short decrease in lift when turning downwind until its groundspeed increases proportionally to the wind speed. A plane does not know any difference from a 10mph wind to 100mph wind. But if you are flying into a 100mph and turn downwind your ground speed would have to increase 100mph to achieve the same airspeed and same amount of lift. I have 2000 hours of flying spray planes and I assure you that when you turn downwind at the end of a pass with a heavy load you will notice a huge decrease in lift and you can feel the plane trying to fall out from under you. You must increase your angle of attack to maintain altitude while trying not to get to much angle of attack and stalling the plane.

When you go down wind with your plane you notice a lot higher speed in relation to the ground, but when you are going the other way into the wind the relative speed is much slower. In the case of a steady 10 mph wind you would have a speed difference of 20 mph in the two different directions, but the plane would not know the difference in either direction. One of the other problems you run into is in the time it takes to turn the plane. Groundspeed will affect your turn and the time or distance it takes to make it. If you are low and slow and on the verge of stalling a turn downwind will probably do you in. When you turn downwind, the last thing you want to do is pull the throttle back, you need to give it all possible power and try to get the plane to accelerate to regain a safe airspeed. The plane might look like it is screaming, but in reality is barely at flying speed so just do gentle turns until the plane is well under control.

Objects on the upwind side will cause severe turbulance and wind shadows how you like to put it. If you have a quartering crosswind with objects on the up wind side you will have pockets of dead air. When the plane hits the pockets of dead air it suddenly has a much lower airspeed even though the groundspeed seems to be about the same, if it is in the pocket long enough it could stall and fall to the ground before if has time to gain speed and continue flying out of it. Most of the time you will just notice the plane bumping around in the air and no harm will be done. When you land in these condition you need to carry extra speed to allow the plane to fly in the pockets without dropping to severely but sometimes it comes down to pilot skill and plane design. The best pilot could not recover in every situation but usually knows how to stay out of the situation that might be fatal to the aircraft or himself in real aircraft.

Hopefully I have fully confused everyone here as it is hard to put into words what your brain is trying to say, that everyone will understand. In time you will kinda feel what the plane is doing by the amount of stick control you are having to use to stay in the air, and will know when to relax the pressure and when to apply more pressure. Good luck on fixing your plane and keep the airspeed good and don't worry about groundspeed.

If you can't see it, don't hand me the controls!