Mountain flying knowledge required?

Newps wrote:
tony roberts wrote:



You don't fly down the middle, because that may not leave you
enough
space to do a 180 either way

Right.


You don't fly on the updraft side - even though that initially
seems the
safest - because if things change and you need to do a 180, you now
have
to turn into the downdraft - which you may not be able to recover
from.

Wrong. You fly on the downwind side, also known as the updraft side.

If you lose your engine and you are in a downdraft just how smart is
that? You don't knowingly fly in downdrafts, unless of course you
want
to go down.



So you fly in the downdraft side. If you can handle that you will
get
through. If things get worse, at least your 180 will be into a nice
safe
updraft.

If things get worse you may be plastered on the mountain before you
can
turn around.

I guess I would prefer to fly the updraft side of a canyon, unless it
is a narrow canyon (a narrow canyon is one where the radius of turn
exceeds half the canyon width). Take advantage of the lift.

The radius of turn varies as the square of the true airspeed. Even at
80 knots TAS and limiting yourself to a 35-degree bank, you only
require 811.7 feet for the radius of turn.