Chad Speer wrote:
This is interesting. I hadn't considered breaking them up into
headwind and crosswind components. I see the simplicity in that, but
I'll have to run that through the brain a few times to see how it fits.
I certainly can't dismiss it offhand!

No crosswind calcs needed. No trigonometry needed. Just addition and
subtraction.

In your case, aircraft always follow a specified course. Headings
don't matter. Crosswinds don't matter. The only thing that changes is
their speed, and that's simply TAS +/- wind speed for a particular
direction.

So if you calculate at startup the head/tail wind (TAS-GS) for two
aircraft flying basically North or South, and East or West, then you
have enough rough information to extrapolate the speed of the trainee's
airliner, as it turns to face different directions. It's not precise,
but it's good enough to make things more realistic by at least having
the speed change appropriately for each direction.

Kev