At my advanced age, I no longer care so much about asking a question which will
probably embarrass myself. I've been flying for my living firstly as a military
pilot mainly in helicopters and then commercially exclusively in helicopters
for 42 years altogether. I started flying in 1967 and continued for 55 years
until today, while also enjoying my Europa.
About 17,500 hours were spent in large twin auto-pilot equipped helicopters
flying
for a couple of hours on each flight over the North Sea in a straight line
to a rig or platform, rotors running for 15ish minutes on a helideck while
refuelling
and changing passengers, then flying the reciprocal straight line track
homewards.
Yet almost invariably the ground speed which might have been 170 kts outbound
with
a TAS of 145 kts, wouldn't be the expected 120 kts into wind but would usually
be less. This might be accounted for by the requirement to fly at 1000' lower,
but the predicted wind strength should have been less and the ground speed
should have been greater. More often than not the forecast for the wind strength
at different levels would have remained unchanged for a few hours.
Similarly when flying the Europa as I frequently do along a straight nearby
coastline
at a constant power setting and altitude and after about 15 minutes, then
immediately turning around to fly the reciprocal at the same power setting
and altitude, instead of getting the same wind component, it's always different
on the GPS. Yesterday I was getting a ground speed 85 kts into a 30 knot
headwind,
turned around and only made 130 instead of the hoped-for 140 plus! WHY?
Something tells me that Sod's Law is at work, or that Mother Nature doesn't like
me. If I've missed a key factor in my education as a pilot, it would be
interesting
to find out.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=509851#509851
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