boy it's changed; tailwind

[[email protected]]

boy this group has changed unfortunately since i last checked it out.
what happened? where are the students? where's the V speed questions?

ok. here's mine.
tailwind landings... i read in aopa flight training an article that said
that deflection is different in quartering tailwind while taxiing and
while on short final. again, both quartering tailwind situations but one
while taxiing and one on short final. what do you do on final? i know
that while taxiing you dive away from the wind; i.e. if from back left you
push yoke down and turn right..?

thanks and i do hope the posts here go back to what they were. there are
so many other places to post pilot stuff. it was good here when
everything was just student questions and CFI's who care about teaching.

[Earl Grieda]

> wrote in message
...
> boy this group has changed unfortunately since i last checked it out.
> what happened? where are the students? where's the V speed questions?
>
rec.aviation.student

[G.R. Patterson III]

wrote:
>
> boy this group has changed unfortunately since i last checked it out.
> what happened? where are the students? where's the V speed questions?

Probably over in rec.aviation.student?

> tailwind landings... i read in aopa flight training an article that said
> that deflection is different in quartering tailwind while taxiing and
> while on short final. again, both quartering tailwind situations but one
> while taxiing and one on short final. what do you do on final?

Dunno about anyone else, but I fly the plane. As far as the plane is concerned,
there's no such thing as a quartering tailwind when you're in the air. When I'm
on final, my plane is traveling at 65 mph through the air. That's all it "knows",
and that's all that matters.

That said, I won't be landing my Maule with a tailwind, quartering or otherwise.

George Patterson
Love, n.: A form of temporary insanity afflicting the young. It is curable
either by marriage or by removal of the afflicted from the circumstances
under which he incurred the condition. It is sometimes fatal, but more
often to the physician than to the patient.

[Peter R.]

) wrote:

> thanks and i do hope the posts here go back to what they were. there are
> so many other places to post pilot stuff. it was good here when
> everything was just student questions and CFI's who care about teaching.

LOL! You should have taken that left at Albuquerque.

By not doing so you ended up in rec.aviation.piloting, not
rec.aviation.student.

--
Peter
























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[Dylan Smith]

In article >, G.R. Patterson III wrote:
> That said, I won't be landing my Maule with a tailwind,
> quartering or otherwise.

I don't really like doing it, but we did land in tailwinds routinely
whilst towing gliders at one glider club I towed for. On busy days we'd
do the downwind landing to cut turnaround time for the next tow.
This was in a Pawnee.

Fortunately, the field was grass and 300 feet wide which helped mitigate
some of the groundloop risks.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

[Shirley]

Dylan Smith dylan wrote:
>I don't really like doing it, but we did land in
>tailwinds routinely whilst towing gliders at one
>glider club I towed for. On busy days we'd do
>the downwind landing to cut turnaround time
>for the next tow.

What gliderport is that??

At the gliderport where I fly, we have Pawnee tow planes and one paved and two
dirt runways, no 300-ft-wide grass area like you described. The tow planes
don't do downwind landings to save time, busy or not.

If the glider in front of you takes a pattern tow, how much time is going to be
saved by the tow plane doing a downwind landing? a minute? two MAYBE? if the
glider in front of you takes a 3K-ft tow (that takes several minutes), the
little time saved doing a downwind landing is insignificant anyway.

I'm curious as to how "busy" it has to be to justify that? Are you talking
about 3 gliders waiting to be towed? or 10? Either way, unless you have 10
people waiting in line *all day long*, how much time is really saved by doing a
downwind landing vs. a conventional one? not to mention the obvious SAFETY
issue -- if you have THAT many gliders ready to go that you're concerned about
a minute or two of their "wait time", there are also going to be GLIDERS
landing *into* the wind at the same time! Sounds like a recipe for disaster,
just to maybe get a couple more tows in. Is a glider pilot going to refuse to
wait the extra couple of minutes for the Pawnee to make a landing into the
wind? I don't think so.

Sad ... $$ is really always the bottom line motivator, huh?

--Shirley

[G.R. Patterson III]

Dylan Smith wrote:
>
> This was in a Pawnee.

It might be fine under the conditions you describe. Maule recommends against
downwind landings, and I'm the one who pays the bills if I wreck it, so I will
not be landing downwind under any foreseeable circumstances.

George Patterson
Love, n.: A form of temporary insanity afflicting the young. It is curable
either by marriage or by removal of the afflicted from the circumstances
under which he incurred the condition. It is sometimes fatal, but more
often to the physician than to the patient.

[Dylan Smith]

In article >, Shirley wrote:
> I'm curious as to how "busy" it has to be to justify that? Are you talking
> about 3 gliders waiting to be towed? or 10? Either way, unless you have 10
> people waiting in line *all day long*, how much time is really saved by doing a
> downwind landing vs. a conventional one?

It's quite common to have a full grid of gliders waiting to be launched
for most of the day. Downwind landings are only done if the wind is less
than 10 knots. The glider port isn't really a runway as such, it's a
large graded cow pasture (probably the best part of a mile long, and at
least 300 foot width usable).

> not to mention the obvious SAFETY
> issue -- if you have THAT many gliders ready to go that you're concerned about
> a minute or two of their "wait time", there are also going to be GLIDERS
> landing *into* the wind at the same time!

Simultaneous landings are common. It's a judgement issue. So far, in
over 20 years of operation, they have never had a tow plane accident.

> just to maybe get a couple more tows in. Is a glider pilot going to refuse to
> wait the extra couple of minutes for the Pawnee to make a landing into the
> wind? I don't think so.

No - the tow plane gives way to gliders - just as the FARs say it
should. Additionally, the tow plane tends to land on one side of the
field and the gliders on the other.

It's down to the tow pilot's judgement when to land and when a downwind
landing is safe. They don't just blindly land regardless of what's going
on on the ground.
Not every glider club is suitable for these style of operations. I would
never do a downwind landing intentionally in even 1 knot of tailwind at
Andreas - it's hard surfaced and the Auster is a squirelly plane to land
even in the best of conditions. Pawnees on the other hand have good
over-the-nose visibility and are probably the easiest taildragger to
land that I've ever set foot in.

> Sad ... $$ is really always the bottom line motivator, huh?

It's a not-for-profit club, so I think not. Getting gliders in the air
is the motivator, that's why the club exists.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

[Mike O'Malley]

"Dylan Smith" > wrote in message
...
> In article >, G.R. Patterson III wrote:
> > That said, I won't be landing my Maule with a tailwind,
> > quartering or otherwise.
>
> I don't really like doing it, but we did land in tailwinds routinely
> whilst towing gliders at one glider club I towed for. On busy days we'd
> do the downwind landing to cut turnaround time for the next tow.
> This was in a Pawnee.
>
> Fortunately, the field was grass and 300 feet wide which helped mitigate
> some of the groundloop risks.

We'd do the same while towing banners; our field was 1800' long, with
obstructions at one end. Just beyond the obstruction (our hanger) was a noise
sensative area that we couldn't fly over. I'd always take off away from the
hanger, even on a 100F day with a 10 knot tailwind, I'd STILL use less than half
the runway (in a 160hp PA-12). Landings would USUALLY be towards the hanger,
unless it was over 15 knots directly down the runway.

One guy did get in trouble landing downwind early in the season when the field
was more like a rice paddy than a runway, he didn't hold the stick back, and had
the power back when he hit a mud puddle. It put him over on his nose. No
injuries or major damage though, thank god.

--