I'm studying for my IR and having some trouble in calculating the outbound
times. Has anyone got any easy way of calculating the times.

What I do in real life is to time the inbound, and then whatever the
error is on the inbound, I apply it to the outbound the opposite way.
It may take a couple of turns to get it right since the relationship is
not linear, but for small wind speeds compared to aircraft speeds, it
seems to work well enough.

Time outbound one minute. Time inbound. Say it's forty seconds.
That's twenty seconds too little, so next time go outbound a minute and
twenty seconds. Time the inbound. Say it's fifty-five seconds. Next
time go outbound another five seconds - that is, go out a minute and
twenty-five seconds. Iterate until happy.

If interested, the actual formula is:
(where v is velocity, t is time, and d is distance)

v = d / t
or
d = v t

The two distances (along the inbound course) will be the same, to first
order, so set them equal.

d = (v1)(t1) = (v2)(t2)

Rewrite v1 as v+w and v2 as v-w (where w is wind speed)
Rewrite t1 as t and t2 as t+d
(where d is the difference between one minute (t1) and the inbound.)

We end up with
(2w)/(v-w) = d

If I didn't mess anything up. (this doesn't take the crosswind's effect
on the half circle sizes into effect).

Jose
--
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