At 07:06 08 September 2004, Bruce Hoult wrote:
In article ,
Nyal Williams wrote:

I suspect that you may be confusing the 'best speed
to cover the most
ground in a headwind' with 'the best speed to make
a safe approach to
landing'.

Tony,

As I read his question it, he was asking for 'best
speed to cover the most ground in a headwind. Actually,
he seemed to confuse the two in the question.

And why earth would you want to know that when you
were in the circuit?
You are surely not going to go *that* far downwind
that you need best
L/D into wind in order to get back.

The extra speed with wind is to provide extra guard
against a tail gust
stalling you (though the +10 knots or *1.3 does a lot
of that), but
mostly I think so that and likely wind gradient still
leaves you with
flying speed.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

I wouldn't. He proposed the scenario and asked why
1/2 the wind speed added to the best L/D was the best
speed to cover the ground to insure getting back.
He went on to say that that seemed to be the universally
accepted figure and that no one had ever explained
it.

My suggestion to look at the polar was only about the
above formula for best speed to cover ground. I took
it as an incidental question aside from the main question
and chose to address that only. I hope my answer was
not taken as a suggestion about how to fly a pattern!