On Friday, July 29, 2016 at 7:03:37 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 7:33:48 PM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:

Having recently tried the 'Single 180 Turn...' and LIKED it,

I would be curious as to why you think you like the single 180 degree turn better than the conventional rectangular pattern.
Care to explain?
UH

My strong preference is for the conventional 'square' pattern. Here is a recap on my sole '180' pattern and a guess about what felt right.

I'm using an .igc file at one second intervals to aid recollection.

My default procedure is to set spoilers to 50% open, then adjust pattern shape to make my aim point. In this case, I encountered lift on downwind, so I opened spoilers before turning to base. We had had a lot of low altitude slack rope on tow and I was anticipating similar on the way down.

I started to turn base early due to my chosen airspeed, my sink rate and a strong crosswind pushing me away from the runway. I realized right away that I had started to turn prematurely, and decided to 'fly base on a 45 diagonal' relative to the runway (instead of 90 degree square) in order to place my 'turn to final' farther from the threshold.

At this point, I had just started to bank for the turn to base, so my bank angle was not steep yet, and for no deliberate reason, I held the bank angle steady as I tried to read where the glide slope was going to intersect the ground and how the crosswind was affecting the flight path. The crosswind reduced my rate of turn.

I have a tendency/preference to hold control inputs steady and evaluate the result.

Referring to the flight path recorded in the .igc file I see that when I completed 90 degrees of turn, I opted to increase the bank to make the additional 90 degrees of turn. From to the .igc, I completed the turn 300 feet above my touchdown point. (Given the slot cut in the forest that we fly through on final, and the possibility of sink, this height is just about right..)

I flew two connected shallow 90 degree turns, not a true 180 constant bank turn from downwind to final (that's harder I expect). I assume that there is some similarity. I liked that it seemed rather easy to judge the intersection of the glide slope with the ground. My compensation for crosswind was gradual because my heading changed gradually. It seemed easy to keep my chosen airspeed rock steady (2X stall speed). It seemed easy to align final with the runway. Because everything was smooth, gradual and consistent, it was easy to evaluate how things were going and make small adjustments as needed.

I did not set out to fly a '180 turn pattern'. It happened. I accidentally deviated from my training and 'best practices'. I'm reporting and not advocating. I'm looking for perspective.