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3 Answers

Wind correction angle during high wind holding.

Asked by: 10363 views Commercial Pilot, FAA Regulations, Flight Instructor, General Aviation, Instrument Rating

What is the best way to calculate or correct for wind during holding in a high wind condition?

Is there any rule of thumb or formula ?

 

Steve.

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3 Answers



  1. John D Collins on May 15, 2016

    There maybe a rule of thumb, but the outbound wind correction must lie between using a wind correction angle between 2 and 3 times the wind correction used on the inbound leg.

    Using a value of 2.5 and rolling out of the turn to intercept the inbound leg with a 45 degree intercept is what I do.

    Assume the wind is a direct crosswind blowing the aircraft towards the oval and the outbound leg. Tracking the inbound leg produces a wind correction angle of a. Tracking the inbound course compensates for the drift of X in distance in one minute. Assuming the rest of the hold is uncorrected during the two turns, the outbound turn and the inbound turn take roughly 2 minutes to accomplish and during that time the aircraft will drift away from the inbound course by a distance of 2X. So on the outbound leg, you need to compensate for the outbound leg drift which is X (the same as the inbound amount) and also compensate for the drift of the two turns. So distance wise, the outbound leg has to compensate for 3X. Three times the distance does not precisely equate to three times the angle. But the drift is related to the crosswind angle by the tan of the angle. So one could describe an equation that the angle b to be used on the outbound leg has a tan value equal to three times that of the tan of angle a. For a 20 degree crosswind angle, the outbound would be 47 degrees, or a multiple of 2.4. For a 15 degree crosswind correction angle, the outbound leg would use 39 degrees, or 2.6 times the angle in the opposite direction. A ten degree crosswind angle would use 2.8 or 28 degrees.

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  2. Best Answer


    Mark Kolber on May 16, 2016

    John, You did a great job describing the 2-3 times the inbound correction for the outbound rule of thumb and explaining its source.

    A question: what do you use for guesstimating the =first= outbound in high wind conditions? IOW, you are going to hold south on the 180° radial. You are arriving from the west, so you are going to make a direct entry. In no-wind, you simply fly a 180° heading. But if we have, say, a strong easterly wind that will blow you toward the inbound course, potentially putting you on the non-holding side when you turn inbound, what do you use to guestimate the correction when you don’t already have an inbound correction as a reference?

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  3. RGWv on Jul 04, 2017

    First I fly straight for 15 seconds before turning outbound. I know approx. the wind speed so I apply 2.5 times (60*wind speed/TAS).

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