Looking for a math wiz!

Chad,

I think that some clarification of the use might help. I can imagine two
scenarios:

1) enroute - in this case, you know the track and ground speed from radar.
You have the filed TAS. You have no idea of the crab angle or heading. This
sounds like the information you presented in your question. However,
enroute, who cares what the wind correction is. I am having trouble
imagining how this would help a controller - in training or not.

2) terminal - in this case, you still know the track and ground speed from
radar. However, now the filed TAS is probably no longer valid since it is
probably at a lower altitude than filed and used to compute the TAS. The
plane may also be under speed constraints. On the other hand, the controller
may be vectoring so now you have an assigned heading and maybe even an
assigned speed. You also have the pressure for the area and the TAS can be
computed from that and radar data. If this were an automated computation, it
could be done on every plane that was given an assigned speed (or even IAS
queried from the pilot) and an assigned heading (or even queried from the
pilot). Now maybe not every plane can provide all of the data but certainly
some could. Enough to update the calculated wind periodically.

Scenario 2 seems to me the one that would make knowledge of the wind most
desirable. It is also the scenario that could provide additional data and
certainly provides different data than what was posed in your question.

What say you?

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Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK