Can anybody tell me the formula to determine the ground speed considering I have the winds and the TAS.
Thank you in advance
Aviation math
Moderators: sky's the limit, sepia, Sulako, lilfssister, North Shore, I WAS Birddog
There is this mysterious thing called "trigonometry" which only a miniscule percentage of pilots are capable of calculating.
Keeping It Very Simple: for any given wind, you can break down the wind into headwind/tailwind component, and crosswind component. For groundspeed calculation, you can probably just ignore the crosswind component, and just subtract the headwind or add the tailwind to your TAS, and you'll be close enough for gov't work.
How do you figure out what headwind/tailwind component is? Using this mysterious "trig" thing, it is the cosine of the angle of the wind off the nose, multiplied by the scalar strength of the wind. When doing trig calcs be sure of your units - you are almost certainly using degrees, not radians.
Keeping It Very Simple: for any given wind, you can break down the wind into headwind/tailwind component, and crosswind component. For groundspeed calculation, you can probably just ignore the crosswind component, and just subtract the headwind or add the tailwind to your TAS, and you'll be close enough for gov't work.
How do you figure out what headwind/tailwind component is? Using this mysterious "trig" thing, it is the cosine of the angle of the wind off the nose, multiplied by the scalar strength of the wind. When doing trig calcs be sure of your units - you are almost certainly using degrees, not radians.
You mean without a whiz wheel? Holy crap. What do you think we are? Super humans?
How do you figure out what headwind/tailwind component is? Using this mysterious "trig" thing, it is the cosine of the angle of the wind off the nose, multiplied by the scalar strength of the wind. When doing trig calcs be sure of your units - you are almost certainly using degrees, not radians.
I guess some a more human than others
Thanks for all the replies guys,
hz2p, how would the formula go, maybe like this :
(cos angle in degres) X wind speed = residual speed of wind
Give this website a shot. It contains formulas for everything. All written in MS-Excel terms.
http://williams.best.vwh.net/avform.html
http://williams.best.vwh.net/avform.html
It's better to break ground and head into the wind than to break wind and head into the ground.
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corn-shoot
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- Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 8:06 am
- Location: Entrails, SK
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corn-shoot
- Rank 7
- Posts: 527
- Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 8:06 am
- Location: Entrails, SK
