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Crosswind Calculations

Most aircraft designs are tested to maintain controllability in crosswinds where the componet felt at 90 degrees to the takeoff or landing path is less that 20% of the level flight stalling speed. Good flight planning requires making calculations and these are usually done with a crosswind chart. Of course if the wind is 90 degrees to the landing path, then there is a pure crosswind with no headwind. By the same token, wind directly done the landing path would have no crosswind. However let's consider a wind of 40 knots blowing at an angle of 60 degrees to the centre line of the landing path. In the diagram we see how the crosswind calculator is used. The arcs represent various wind speeds. First we find the 40 knot arc and then we move to its intersection with the wind angle of 60 degrees. If we drop a vertical line, we see that it gives us a 90 degree crosswind component of 35 knots, and a headwind down the landing path of 20 knots as represented by the drawn yellow lines.