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Author Topic: Headwinds...  (Read 2861 times)

Offline Baradium

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Headwinds...
« on: February 26, 2007, 08:32:49 AM »
Did a double Anchorage (two round trips from Fairbanks) run today...   going down we had a tailwind and enjoyed about a 30kt boost overall as we climbed up, by the time we got to the "high" winds we were already descending, through the turbulance.

On the way north we had to climb up high due to the turbulence from Denali (Mt. McKinley).   The first time up we were battling a 97 kt headwind for most of the trip... the second time it boosted up to 123 kts.   In an aircraft putting out around 270 kts true airspeed we were doing  around 150kts over the ground for a large portion of the trip.   We were making around 135kts for most of the climb.    The numbers seem fast if I regress to cessna days, but a  Cessna 182 trues out at 135 kts!

Guess who got to fly the northbound legs (into the headwind) tonight?

Oh, and Anchorage was also clear skies with almost unlimited visibility... Fairbanks required ILS approaches to pretty low visibility (was around a mile)... and we had family members of the owners of the company on both northbound legs.    Talk about "no pressure" for the approaches and landings!    ::eek::

P.S.  Post #600  (wow, I talk a lot)... do I get a prize?
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Offline BrianGMFS

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Re: Headwinds...
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2007, 03:04:06 PM »
I hear ya about the winds..... About a month ago, one of my company's King Air C-90's did a round trip from Burlington VT to White Plains NY (just outside of NYC). Anyway, on the trip down the headwinds were pretty good at about 50 kts or so. Usually it's about an hour and a half trip and it took almost two hours. on the return trip it was another story. the winds aloft increased quite a bit to over 100 kts... Pilots saw 341 kts. ground speed on the GPS most of the way  ::unbelieveable:: That's only about 80 kts. slower than our Citation Encore does across the ground on a "normal" day. took em' only 40 minutes to get back home.


Brian
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Offline tundra_flier

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Re: Headwinds...
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2007, 08:29:21 PM »
Geeze...and here I was impressed the day I got 154mph groundspeed due to a 50kt tail wind.   ::)

Phil
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Offline undatc

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Re: Headwinds...
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2007, 01:15:03 AM »
We always have fun here in our warriors.  Usually the wind in the Forks is so bad, if you go into slow flight, you can actually get a negative ground speed on the GPS.  Did that on one of my first flights before my solo here.
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Offline chuckar101

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Re: Headwinds...
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2007, 09:02:04 PM »
One of the instructors here had a ground speed of 17kts trying to get through banning pass.  Slowest i got was 60 kts yesterday on our climbout from IWA heading to long beach trying to get pass a cold front.  Got to love em
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WOW I did that!
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