Winds aloft

[rringgold]

It’s a beautiful clear cold Saturday morning here in MPLS. I’m sitting here sipping a hot mug of coffee and suddenly a really strong wind blows through.
So naturally I have to look up the winds aloft for the local area. I’m wondering what fabulous ground speed could I get on the GPS if I were brave enough to go out.
I’ve seen many double digit winds up in the flight levels, but I know any altitude above 12K is not attainable in our 112 without the help of a mountain upslope.
I was quite surprised to see 290 @ 76 knots at 6,000 ft!
If I could actually taxi out to the runway without flipping the plane over, I could finally attain that proverbial impossible 200 knot ground speed that we have all been dreaming of!
But since I’m conservative and cautious, I think I’ll just stay inside and heat up some Lefse in the microwave.
Wishing you clear skies and tailwinds!

 

[sshore]

I made a quick trip to Austin yesterday to pick up my son. Had 35 kts on the nose, but the same as a tailwind going back. It was nice to be at 24" MP and 23 RPM and getting 175 kts on the ground for a miserly 11.1 GPH.

 

[wiguy]

I sometimes daydream about a great tailwind. That may be looking at winds at Commander altitudes, even if not flying. Just to keep things reasonable, I feel like I struck gold with even an honest 25 kt tailwind. It’s even better if later on the return trip, conditions improve for direction of flight.

The other part is to minimize the headwind, which may include flying lower. Not that there’s a world of difference, but I thought the adage was flying a higher power, faster speed into a headwind, the lower power, lower speed riding a tailwind. There may be a little hair splitting involved.

 

[Chris Mixon]

I finally got a 200+ kts groundspeed a few weeks ago... Unfortunately, I was 2 miles from the Gulf Coast, and the winds were from the N, so I could not enjoy it for long. Trip northbound was Slowwwwwww.