On Sep 22, 11:01 pm, "Kyle Boatright" wrote:
What is your threshold for landing (or departing) downwind? Will you land
knowing you have a 5 knot tailwind? 10 knots? At what point will you
"flip" the pattern to takeoff or land into the wind?

Me? I'm a 5 knot kind of guy (but I fly a taildragger)...

I landed at 3 different fields today where the established pattern resulted
in a landing with a quartering 7 knot (or more) tailwind, with some mild
gusts thrown in for good measure.

At the first field, I was careless enough to assume the traffic was using
the runway facing the wind. The downwind landing came as a bit of a
surprise, then I looked at the wind sock - oops...

At the other two fields, I announced my position and intentions and waited
(360's on the downwind) until I could land into the wind without interfering
with aircraft already in the pattern.

And what is the correct radio phraseology to say: "Fellas, it is time to
reverse the pattern - you're taking off and landing downwind.." ?


One can easily do the math to get a ballpark figure. Landing distance
increases as the square of the approach ground speed. If the approach
speed is 60, and you have a 10 knot wind, your landing distance will
increase by 35%.For 20 knots it increases by 75%. For 30 knots, it
more than doubles. A 5 knot limit for short runways makes sense; 10
knots if you really know what you are doing. I would not atempt
anything higher unless it is a super long runway.