You know it's windy when....
 

Your plane's tail comes off the ground with a touch of throttle above idle.
Your plane takes off in under 2 feet at 1/3rd throttle.
Your plane goes backwards at idle into the wind without dropping a wing, nose or anything.
Your plane gets tossed around during a high speed cross wind flyby.
Your plane flies by on a high speed pass at 1/3rd throttle as if it were wide open throttle.
Landing becomes one of the most difficult things ever done.


Flying in winds of 15-18 with 20 MPH gusts today, cross winds, turbulence. What a blast! Landing was extremely tough as the place I fly has a two level pole barn, and the wind was coming over it from the southwest, which made the wind unpredictable at that end of the landing strip, which is right where you come in. So keeping it between the tall corn on the left, and the real warbird parts on the right was a challenge.

I met that challenge, and got the plane down without hitting anything. Just as it touched down though a gust blew over the barn, and caused it to ground loop just as the wheels touched, caught the prop and snapped it, but other than that, I think I did pretty damned good. Flying in this kind of wind is the most challenging where I fly. Any other direction, taking off and landing is easy, but from the south, or south west, it is a real challenge. I think it make a better pilot of one as you really need to focus and stay ahead of the plane, especially when the wings are wagging with each gust. When it was down, it was rocking from the wind.

What a blast! I flew my modified LT40 in this today, but there was no way at all I woud even attempt it with the 4*120. Last time I flew in winds like this, but under 12 MPH, I could not keep it lined up, I had to crab it just to get it close and as soon as I tried to straighten it up to land it would drift over the corn on the left, and I wound up landing it down wind instead. Today there would be no way to land it without some damage to it, I feel it would literally be coming in sideways, I was seeing it in good profile last time, in stronger winds, no doubt is would do worse.

Ah typical British flying conditions.

That is about right for Colorado for 8 months out of the year, here you have to learn to fly in the wind or you won't get much time flying.

I dont mind flying in wind, as long as it isnt from the south, over the roof of the barn, curling around and making your plane do unpredictable things! :) Though it does make for an interesting day flying! :)

Around here this year that's the only way you will fly is if you fly when it's windy ! It's never as relaxing when on a less windy or calm day but it makes you a better pilot. You will also see that the larger and heavier a plane gets the better it handles in strong winds !

Mojave Desert, the wind blows 300 days a year above 35 mph. Home sweet home...

Bob

Windsock
 

acdii - here's a windsock for ya.....

Hogflyer

Your wind gauge missed the last reading.

"Chain missing? Welcome to Kansas!

I've flown several times in winds up to 20mph and I've been flying a month. Likes the poster said a consistent wind is okay and if anything it makes take offs shorter and landings seem to happen slower.

its that ground effect of the wind rolling over the land that gets you. I've been gliding nicely into a head wind coming for landing and then wham a gust pushed the plane back up and round you go again.

all part of the learning curve though.

When I get good at flying I think I'd fly in most winds. I'm keeping my trainer specifically for this.

Winds up to 20..... Heck here in Texas that is just a breeze.

You know its windy when you have to use the ailerons on your wing to maneuver it towards the airplane you are about to assemble at the flying field.

Fly in the wind is a normal thing for me, and i think it is also a very interesting thing to fly my airplane in a wind. The only problem is that i have to abandon the cost which will happen on my airplane crash.

You get to the field, get the wing out of the car, go to get the fuse, and the wing attempts to take off by itself heading downwind... Well, I just left the fuse in the car, and went to pick up the wing and go home:-) Of course in our area 90% of the days the wind is way less than 10mph. In some other places they are not that lucky... and they adapt:-)

Gerry

Here in Texas as well as other windy places it's pretty standard for guys to have a windy day plane just be about to get out on days like that. My Ultra Stick and Kaos are excellent in the wind, as is (surprisingly) my Parkzone Stryker. I've had that little foamy out in very whippy 30 mph winds before and it still flies like a beast. IMO, a heavyish Kaos is as good as it gets for a windy day plane, with an Ugly Stick a very close second and a good bit more beginner friendly due to the straight wing and generous vertical stabilizer that weathevanes into the wind really quickly. Guys who are thinking about keeping their trainers for windy day flying are barking up the wrong tree, because a trainer has a lot of negatives in that environment. They are too lightly loaded, they are too airspeed sensitive in pitch, and the dihedral makes them roll away from any side breeze. Trainers are nice later on for those calm days when you just want to make lazy circles around the flying field, not for fighting gusty and turbulent wind.

And we don't even call it a windy day in Fort Worth unless you have to get someone to hold your wing while you hook up the aileron extension to keep it from blowing away. I know several older guys who won't even fly on those days, but I've always had to get the most out of my trips to the field. So I've had several days over the last few years when I've had the flying site all to myself as the girly men wait for the wind to die down in the evening so they can fly their pretty IMAC machines.

Oklahoma ..."where the wind comes sweeping down the plane" ....misspelling intended.....

I dont have no stinking trainer! LOL It may LOOK like a trainer, but that wing does't roll upright anymore, I made sure of that! :) Amazing how different it can fly when you take the Dihedral out and bolt it down. I am thinking of putting larger ailerons on and giving them more throw. When I was flying yesterday I flipped it over, my wife, who never comes to see me fly was there and said, your upside down. Yep, and continued to fly it around like that. That LT40 is a great all around plane. My 4* has more dihedral to it than that one does.

They say that a good pilot breaks ground and flies into the wind...

In our club we have some pilots that break wind and fly into the trees... (or, sometimes the corn).

Wind really cleans the airfield. In a windy day, there is nobody out...

Gerry

.... when the wind picks up your plane and throws it 10' up and 15' over on it's top. Yes it happend to me :-)

If you have many pilots that break wind, you would enjoy the windy day, just to clear the airfield!:confused:

Congratulations on conqureing the wind! One comment though. I've been teaching RC in Oklahoma for 18 years now. We ususally stop teaching at 16 mph due to the facts the students learn very little when they are fighting winds and associated gusts like that.

For 99% of all RC planes there is absolutely no need for the plane to be lined up with the runway before touch down. It is perfectly accptable to touch down in the crab and then turn to roll down the centerline of the runway.

The need to go parallel to the line of flight is true of full scale planes but our landing gear are relatively 1000's of times stronger than a full scale plane.

So make it easier on yourself, ago ahead and get used to touching down in the crab till you get the skills of flying in the wind mastered. Then add the "polish" of makeing that full scale type in-to-the- wind cross controlled slip down.

MTC YMMV

I thought this was interesting. It is a chart of wind speeds across the US. It was developed for the wind turbine industry and shows average wind speeds about 240 feet off the ground. The windiest parts of the country are down the middle (purple). If you want calm winds, head for the Southeast or parts of the West.


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1913451

I was flying in same conditions yesterday, I'm about 50 mi. SE of Capron. It was fun flying my 50cc U-Can-Do backwards.

I've actually took off backwards before....

Very interesting chart. Now I know why all three fields I fly it have wind generators with in eye sight.


David

i thought we had problems with wind in uk most of us never fly over 20 mph but it makes for good practice, easier to take off but harder to land,reading your comments if i lived in usa i probably would never fly however went to california in 95 it just seemed nice and warm no wind the place to live for flyers , cheers

Lol Gerry. Stolen.

For those who don't live in windy places, it's not so bad. You find that a different set of airplanes are popular in windy places, and of course the developed skill set is a little different. My club doesn't even recommend the traditional trainers like the LT-40 and Nextstar. We've been big fans of the Avistar (thanks for messing with perfection, Hobbico) because it handles the wind so much better. But here, you see lots of Ugly Sticks, lots of SPA type planes, plenty of warbirds, and nearly everyone has a foamy or two. What you don't see a whole lot is WWI biplanes, small 3D planes, or anything under powered. The ubiquitous Cub is everywhere, but here it's a special occasion flyer. Either that or it's crazy overpowered so it can cut through the wind turbulence on normal flying days.

We have wind here in west Texas 90% of the time blowing 10 - 15 mph from the south and always gust past 20 mph. I am teaching my nephew to fly and the best time to fly here is right before sun up till about 10 am. The first 2 afternoons that we tried to go out and fly, the good ole wind was blowing 20-25 mph. I had to get him to hold the plane until I was ready to firewall the throttle. Take off was less than 15 feet and you could almost land it without any roll. I am teaching him to fly on a sky raider Mach 1 trainer. At 1/2 throttle and up , it will handle the wind extremely well as there is no dihedral in the wing. He is doing well learning to fly and may be ready to attempt take offs after a couple of more flights. I did show him how easy it was to land in a tumbleweed at the end of the runway too !! Luckily it was a nice new green tumbleweed about 30" tall and didn't hurt the plane at all.

Awesome.

Ahrrrrr, one thing is to fly in the winds, the other are the stupid forecasts.
My trip to both fields I fly from is long, 30 & 45 minutes. So I check 2-3 different weather websites before I go for wind and rain.
Today the 3 websites agreed on 9 kph winds and no rain............
You guessed right, at least 20kph winds and gusty, maybe more 100 ft up. It made for good ugly landings with power.
Good thing that my preferred plane 60 size electric Sbach has a good landing gear, she came home standing in all 3 wheels

I never looked at it like that. I looked at damage limitation by keeping my nice models at from e wind. Perhaps I should use my Spacewalker for windy days.

This pretty much sums up my landing, it was crabbed all the way down, it was the touch down the didnt go so well, only because of the nasty turbulence over the barn roof that caused it to ground loop and snap the prop. If I didnt have to worry about hitting the A-26 or Panther sitting there, would make for a lower pucker factor when landing from that direction.

Just about everybody with any stick time has flown in winds high enough to stop their model in one spot over the runway. I've done it in a full sized Cessna 152 while under the hood. My instructor was having me hold a heading and altitude while slowing the airplane down to just a few mph over stall speed which would be about 50 mph. I didn't know what he was up to until he had me remove the hood and look down at the airplanes shadow. It was stopped near a road. The real excitement of that flight was landing at an away airport and getting off the runway and tied down. I got out of the airplane to hold the upwind strut so we could turn off to taxi to the tie down area. Once there, I had to hold the brakes and keep the engine running while he tied down the plane. On returning to our local airport he showed me just how far the ailerons will really go (the yoke was upside down) to correct for cross winds. After that lesson, I always tried to have my flights on days with more cross winds because a wind down the runway is just too easy.

Carl, at your level of experience it's better to just not fly on the whippy wind days. If you don't feel confident in your ability to fly it in fairly calm conditions, it's not going to get any better in the wind. But of the two, your Spacewalker will definitely be easier to handle on windy days. When you're ready to really have some fun, get an Ugly Stick and start practicing backwards takeoffs and hover landings!

ROFLOL!

I checked in with Approach Control with Information Hotel while over the north practice area one fine morning as a front blew in. I was in a C-150, had the flaps full down, the engine at idle with the carb heat pulled, and pointed into the wind. The little protector over the pitot tube wouldn't stay open so the airspeed kept going to 0. It took Approach Control a couple of minutes to notice and start yelling because my ground track was opposite of reported heading. Now THAT was a blast! The hardest one was the landing for fuel at OKC with a 26 knot headwind in a C-152. The landing was cake, taxiing to parking was just plain hard work..

I fly models in places where there is high wind and manage to land without too much embarrassment although some of the approaches look real strange!. Take off, start the left turn and hold it until lined up for final... OOPS! That is normal for me.

Some 30 years ago I went to an event in west Texas. All I had was .25 sized airplanes. As I was assembling them someone came up and told me I couldn't fly those there so I asked why. They said the wind was too bad for anything smaller than .60 sized planes. I owned their sky for the entire weekend! Now they fly .25 sized planes there.

The next year I borrowed Kadet Senior just for that event. It had some significant modifications - straight wing, conventional gear, a four stroke (OS 61?), a glider launch assembly and servo, and HUGE flaps! I was trying to back it down to a landing but chickened out when the plane got unstable in the roiling air about a foot or so off the ground - I was having trouble flaring the tail wheel 'properly'. We would get a gust and I had to work the elevator and the tail wheel would go here or there. I hate breaking someone else's airplane so I gave up.

Seriously, when you use the wide short runway to take off it is accepted proof that there might be some wind. When you LAND on that same runway, mere mortals like me pack up and leave the field to you. :D

Try flying on the coast for a lesson in wind 'management'

...you're standing in the runway with one hand on the stab and the other trying to get enough throttle to keep the tail straight before takeoff.

Now you got the idea of this thread! LOL

You know it is too windy when your plane doesn't need to get any ground speed to fly. Or the plane can't make headway against the wind and you wind up going way downrange to try to land.

I had that happen years ago on a windy November day and I really wanted to fly that day. I had to hold the plane up until I was ready to fly and it was quite tricky as it wanted to fly just sitting there on the ground. It was a problem trying to start the engine and not have the plane flip over on me in the process. Anyway, take off was more like a Harrier jet taking off, no rolling off down the runway, just give it throttle and up and away it went. The plane would flash byu fast on the downwind leg and take a long time going upwind. Later the engine flamed out and the plane couldn't penetrate and I wound up landing way downwind from where it took off from. I don't think it had any ground speed doing it either. It was fun hovering around in the air too. I was idling the engine too long and it stalled out on me.

Yeah I have my "windy day planes" too. But if I do a lot of flying when it is windy, I get so I have a lot of trouble landing the planes when it isn't windy.

Earlwb, been there, done that! When I flew in Maine we were only a few miles inland so we constantly had wind. I got so use to landing with the wind that one day it was calm and I couldn't seem to get the plane to land. I kept overshooting the runway.

I use to be stationed at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Where most of the Navy's flight testing is done. They had a blimp there coming in to land with a strong headwind. His groundspeed had to be about 5-10 MPH. He did a 180 and really started moving the other way. The wind must have really been kicking his *****.

We fly in the wind down here in Florida a lot. My personal take on wind limitations is when I have trouble trying to taxi on or off the runway. With that said I have flown in worse conditions wishing I hadn't once breaking ground. Words of advice would be to fly in conditions that are comfortable to you, if they are not then don't. In time your limitations with wind will most likely expand with experience gained, so fly when its windy just use judgement. He who walks away gets to fly his airplane another day is not all that a bad rule if its making
you nervous.

Oklahoma provides LOTS of crosswind, gust, and variable-direction wind practice. Here's a handy resource for everyone - just click on your state to see the good news...always current from the most current reporting airport weather stations in your area.... enjoy!!

http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps...nt/wind-speed/