How do you calculate wind speed??

[Guest pagotan]

Brad,Thanks a bunch for your comments! I guess sometimes the responsibilities and professionalism of the profession is underminded by negative media reports which lead to comments as we saw here. Hopefully your statement will be understood and it is surely a testimony to the cause of the pilot community.Thanks again!Michael

[Guest venquessa]

OK, I'll come clean, 1. I didn't mean my comments to be so sharp.2. I certainly don't think I could do better.3. I certainly don't think that flying a sim on a PC would prepare me for flying an airliner in any way shape or form.4. The ape comment, was more a reference or satar to NASA trained apes. An old joke about the apes getting lists of checklists on the ISS and the women controller being told to sit back and dont touch anything.)Summarizing the discussion so far we have a cocktail.1. Humans make mistakes.2 Being 30,000+ feet up (hell 20 feet up!) is dangerous.3. Traveling at all in bad weather is dangerous.4. Travelling at over 200 mph is dangerous.5. Airports are busy.6. Airlines want money.7. People want to get where they want to get fast and on time.8. Aircraft are large, heavy, fast and most significantly complex.9. People make more mistakes.10.Airlines want more money.11. Airports get busier.12. More people want to fly.13. Large airports need to in or close to centers of population.See the pattern? Already we have aircraft that need computers to control them, they are so complex that no one man can understand all the systems in perfect detail. So pilots have checklists, manuals and computers to help.This is necessity, in a complex machine like a 737 you simply need help from automatic systems or your work load would be massive and result in less concentration on the safety mission.However checklists and procedures stiffle improvisation and abaption to the situation by their very defintiion they instruct a set standard way.I don't mean to make a joke I might regret, but, do pilots have a checklist for taking a dump? and what if the checklist doesn't cover the person before you pissing on the seat?I hope you can see my point. The commercial skies are teaming with massive complex machinery with pilots that basically can't understand the workings that have the where they are, 30,000ft up at 300knots with 300 people in the back. It's risky. Yet somehow, even with the bad media image, it seems the risk is carefully carpeted over by a nicely smiling air stewardess and a calm captain voice telling you, you have just completed the safetest part of your journey and have a nice onward journey.When the checklists fail and it's up to the pilots on board to save the day, how can they when no-'one' really understands the machine that could kill them and all on board.What about when the checklists are wrong? What about when the software really does crash? Do pilots get a software schematic?I'll stop now.I didn't mean to offend anyone, sorry for miss wording my last post.And, no I love flying. I still wait for the time it goes wrong though, to become one of those souls, just another statistic, drop in the bucket. The first time I boarded a plane I was immediately worried when they closed the door, the sense of helplessness, vunerability and danger you can't even see out theside window, you have no instruments in the back and no control (not that I would advise installing controls in every seat LOL).I am actually taking a flying lesson later this year, I might even ask for a spin. I appreiciate your point though :)PS. For a living I am a computer programmer, it's not entirely impossible that I could find myself programming avionics in the years to come.

[744pilot 0]

>You can pick up a cheap E-6B online or in a pilots shop and>save yourself the headache of all those formulas. Since most>of us have palm pilots or its ilk there are also programs free>out there that will give you winds and leg times. Do you know a program like that???

[744pilot 0]

Hello again,I'm got realy curious if someone is able to calculate my totaal headwind component on my flight from EDDC to LTAI??Here is my exact route and I putted the Ground Tracks (TRK) in it.I don't know the wind direction but you can figure that out I guess??!!PS. Were do you find such Free windcalculator?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/83236.jpg

[Guest LLgaz]

Hi,When flying, do you use an addon weather service like FSMeteo or ActiveSky? If you do, then they both replicate these winds aloft to a high degree of accuracy. Now, that isn't always the case. While it is obviously realistic to look at these charts and figure out your winds aloft from them, what happens when you climb into FS and find out that when you get to FL390 that the winds you're getting are totally different to what you see on the above chart, therefore throwing your calculations, predictions, etc totally out of whack?These charts are great for giving you a general view of the winds aloft. For example, looking at your route, I'd say that you will have mostly crosswinds of about 40 to 60kts.A much more accurate method will be to use the "Flight Planning" feature of FSMeteo or Activesky. In both, you can import your flight plan complete with all the waypoints...tell the program your cruising speed (Mach, TAS or IAS) and your altitude, and the programs will give you your average wind component and speed.FSMeteo gives you a table with the winds at each waypoint, the crosswind component, Magnetic and True direction, speed, Ground speed, time, etc. etc., and at the bottom it gives you your average and totals. Use this average value for fuel planning, etc.Activesky uses this information (at least the version I have) for your route based weather and wind smoothing. I don't like it because it sets your average wind when you get to cruise and the winds doesn't change at all. FSMeteo on the other hand gives you the accurate winds when you're flying. The disadvantage of this is of course severe wind changes on occasion......but this is pretty much rare these days and with the new update to FSUIPC, these severe wind changes should be eliminated.Sorry for the long post, but basically, use these charts to give you a general idea of what your winds are going to be, because, for the most part, FSMeteo and Activesky are pretty accurate with those charts. But use the features of FSMeteo/Activesky to do your fuel planning, etc.If you don't use FSMeteo/Activesky, then you'll have to do a rough average and hope you actually get those winds when you get to that altitude. This may or may not happen with FS9 default weather.

[744pilot 0]

Thanks man!!I guess my next addon will be FSMETEO or Active sky pro. :)

[Guest TrafficTraffic]

That is really an oversimplification of the wind computation. Consider a pure crosswind 90 degrees from your course. If your TAS was 100kts and the pure crosswind is 100kts, how long until you get to your destination? Never. But HTWnd = 0.0kts in your computation.See http://williams.best.vwh.net/avform.htm#Wind for the full mathematical details. It's even easier to use a mechanical or electronic E6B to get the wind correction angle and groundspeed.Lee Hetherington, PP-ASEL (KBED)