OK then.  Thanks for all your comments.  Sorry for causing such a stir!  After reading all the post, the conclusion I sort of came to is:

1.  Because it's a sim, have a bit of a play about with the wind speed and direction and gusts etc.  Who cares if you crash on a sim???
2.  Become efficient on the sim with 15mph+ and I should be fine when I get to the real thing.
3.  When I do get to the real thing - depending on the instructor - I can expect to start flying in anything up to about 10mph at least to begin with???

Cheers

Don't be sorry!! Getting the experienced guys to argue about things is how the rest of us get to learn sometimes. Usually there is truth on both sides of any debate. The more you read and learn and try for yourself, the sooner you will figure out what to believe and what works best for you. Sounds like your off on the right foot, keep us posted on your success!

Just going back to the original post, the wind speed you set on the sim should depend on the level of skill you have reached. When at a novice level it is easy to mistake whether the aircraft movements are down to wind gusts or control inputs. As confidence builds work up to at least 15mph with 30mph gusts and then crank it up if you want to have some fun. When at the field 15mph would be about a max for an aircraft of the type you have with 10mph being more sensible to practice manouvers. As a BMFA examiner I have tested before, people that have really flown in conditions that were beyond them and their aircraft. They got no extra credit for doing so and in a couple of cases ended up crashing (not good on a test). The sims can be great fun but if you are using it as a serious practice tool my advice would be keep it to reallity and stretch yourself to sensible maximum limits.

Actually, flying within 5 knots of your stall speed (up high though) and making turns while doing so is part of the most basic flight training for full scale. It shows confidence and precise aircraft control. I have flown a cessna 150 at 40 knots, and made turns in winds aloft that are blowing at 30 knots. Did my airspeed drop to 10 knots causing the plane to stall and then enter a spin? No, absolutely not. Did my ground speed increase from 10 knots to 70 knots? Yes, and that is all.


Don
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Well said.
As I mentioned in another thread about this same argument, inertia, momentum, gravity, ground speed, and air speed all play a part in flying. The thing a lot of full scale guys don't realize is that they have airspeed indicators that keep them from flying on the edge of a stall in most casesag. Most full scale pilots wouldn't dare fly a Cessna in 60mph winds at just above stall speed and make a downwind turn at an altitude of 250 feet. But that is about equall to what an RC pilot is doing when he flies an Avistar 50 feet high in a 12mph headwind at 1/2 throttle and then makes a turn downwind.
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Thats good getting the sim first. Let me ask, is this your first time EVER flying an rc airplane? Or have you been flying for some time, and first time in the wind? If its your first time EVER flying, you may want to practice flying first, before you kick the wind in. I posted in another post, that I like flying my big senior telemaster in the wind because its got a huge wing, and taildragger, and the wind catches it easier, so I have to be hotter on the sticks. I still do that, so when I fly my P-51, I kinda know what to expect. So keep up on the sim. I have noticed that there a difference.

I usually fly my telemaster in 15-20 mph winds, does great. On the sim, 15-20 mph winds pulls the airplane away on its own, and in real life would be like 30-40 mph winds, so keep the winds down on the sim. Go by the windsock. Practice cross winds, basically practice all 4 direction winds (north south east west).

The rest of the First Law of Motion is " . . . unless acted on by an outside force." Or, as Newton put it: "unless the body is compelled to change its state."

Like wind, or a halt in existing wind, or air friction.

That's a good take-away from this lesson.

I've always found it easier to fly with 5 to 10 mph of wind rather than none at all. Especially on very hot days in July and August. Wind can be your friend in take-offs and landings - provided it is light, steady and blowing down the runway.

Keep your nose to the wind and your tail to yourself.

I totally agree with the above, and I'd like to add a few more thoughts: In my opinion, the down wind turn can be dangerous, but not necessarily. The wind flows like water in a river. If you row your boat straight across the river, you will drift down stream, but still reach the other shore safely. The same thing happens with model airplanes: You will drift downwind. The problems arise when you try to fly at the same speed - relative to the ground - as when the wind is calm. If you compensate in order to make loops round and straight, and turn really hard to make the downwind turn before the plane drifts too far, you might stall. Let the airplane fly in the moving air, at a safe airspeed - not ground speed - and you will be fine.

The wind won't hurt you at all if you remember that you are flying in moving air. Wind gusts can knock your plane off course (or even turn it upside down), but that is another story.

Don, this made me want to light some candles and a pipe and meditate. You are correct but my, how far we went from a basic question about a sim and wind speed. OK, the thread is shot so what the hay. Wind speed is a lot of fun, one of the guys brought out one of those cool weather stations to the lake bed. After it was all set up and the wind kicked in we started asking all the pilots to guess the wind speed. The answers to this simple question told us why we had so many high wind pilots posting about flying in 40 mph winds. 5mph turned into 15, 10 was over 30, 15 was gale force and 20 was pack it up and get off the lake bed. Well, at about 15 that sand does start to get a bit nasty. Getting all these guestaments was a lot of fun when people didn't know we had the meter, from guys that knew we had it set up the guesses were a lot closer. Go figure. For a good time go read the post below, wind is fun.

On a lake bed, these portable stations are probably pretty accurate, but if you fly somewhere that has a lot of trees and buildings around, they tend to give you wind speeds a lot lower than you'll get a little above ground level. The hand-held ones are just about worthless. It's fairly easy to memorize the first six levels of the land Beaufort scale, and when you've done that you can estimate wind speeds to within maybe plus-or-minus three MPH pretty easily; I've been doing this for years and checking with the weather stations to confirm.

I agree that 15 mph is about it for comfortable flying. I'd say ten for training. Sort of depends on where you live, though. Some parts of the country get a lot of wind and you'd better get used to it if you want to fly. Others (New York State, e.g.) get lots of almost dead calm days.

All I have to add here is "Mmmmm..... chili fly..."

Best true way to see how the wind is going to be for us is the clubs web page. It has weather bug and we can get live feeds. We can get one from Boulder and one from Needles and neither one is really good for the lake bed. We just sort of look at the two and figure out what it will be there. It works pretty good. Funny thing there is how the wind comes up. I had taken off a plane with zero wind on the ground but my plane was getting hammered, I thought I was getting a radio hit but I was the only 72 pilot and the only one in the air. Then a friend took up an electric and I heard him swearing while he was trying to control his plane?? I told him to take a quick look at my planes smoke trail, gone as fast as it came out. Then the wind hit us on the ground. He got his down and when I tried to land my 13 pound plane just hovered about 8 inches off the ground. No idea of the true speed but it was time to pack it up. All the fun factor was gone and the dust was starting to blow. The dust is a great indicator of when to stop flying. Our wind can go from zero to oh my without any warning at all. I seem to always be the snook in the air when it hits and the gusts can be a thrill.

Boy !!!, I wish I hadn't read this thread. I love to fly in the wind and now I'm probably scared. lol ENJOY !!! RED

LargeScale88 - Hi.  Yes it is the first time I will be flying.  Well - technically no - I did fly a plane for about 30 seconds ten years ago when I first had a crack at this hobby.  That time though, I was younger (obviously) and had a lot less patience!  I was having an injury forced break from Aussie Rules Footy and needed to kill some time but as soon as my knee was better, it was back to footy.

Cheers for all your comments.  Now I just have to work out how to set the sim up for random winds/gusts etc.  I can't seem to find how to make such a setting???  You can choose a wind speed and direction but I don't think it gusts or swirls around at all?

Just my 2 cents, but personally I prefer to fly in the wind.  Partially because my field is located on top of an unused landfill and all the obstacles that affect wind like trees and other terrain are 105 feet below my feet.  The hardest thing I had to learn was to land on calm days with no help from the wind keeping my aircraft afloat.  This also helped me learn how to work the throttle close to the ground.

The other benefit of flying off a landfill is the methane helps melt the snow in the winter. LOL 

1wrangler - you and I are in the same camp. Not many of us there though. I agree with all of your posts in this thread.

Kurt

While the sims help a lot they are not an exact replication of R/C flying. If you are not able to add in gusting and/or changing conditions I stand behind my original statement. Start with winds below 10 kts (yes about 12 MPH or 18 KPH) and you should do well. You want to have feedback from your inputs and not the winds. At altitudes below 2000' AGL wind is affected by objects on the ground ie: buildings, trees, hills...etc. This causes turbulence, wind shear, and gusting. Therefore our models are always affected by wind, IN ALL PHASES OF FLIGHT, equally.

Well since the original post, I have tried 15mph winds across, against and with the runway and can safely take off and land without any dramas as well as fly about the place.  I did find it a bit harder to bring the LT-40 down heading into the breeze though.  It floats in really slowly unless I give it a fair bit of throttle and point the nose down a little.  Cross winds weren't really a problem for me although I think I need to practice a little bit more using the rudder to straighten up just before touchdown.  But it didn't appear to be a problem landing on a slightly skewed angle?  Not sure whether thats a true indication of what happens in the real world though?

Yes a slight cross wind is not much trouble. Landing with a strong wind I recommend coming in a little faster, not a lot, but starting your turn from down wind to final sooner and staying closer in to the runway.

Good observation. With a trainer we sometimes struggle to get it to drop in and not float down the runway. As we change models it comes to a point where you can slow them down further than the wings will support them in flight. This is where a few minutes spent 100 ft over the runway doing low speed passes to see the stall characteristics really pays off.

When you add in a cross-wind you get that moment where the relative wind over the control surfaces is not enough for good authority. Or, even worse, when the fuselage of a low-wing model blankets the leeward wind and it drops, allowing the wind under the upwind wing and then it all goes ferschimmel quickly.


Keep up a little steam.


There are also the choices of crabbing in with a side-slip (so nice when it works) or approaching at an angle with a better presentation to the wind and then hoping for ground handling once the wheels are planted (less attractive but often effective).