On Sunday I flew the Cub to Laidlaw Corrals to meet a friend in a Maule. It wasn't that bad at all. Even has some Coyote dens south of the runway! There were some groups of larger weeds and some ruts where someone was pushing the limits with a nose dragger right after a rain on the west end but overall no problem.

Yep Bill showed up here after he left you, I was hopen' to see some pictures!

Wup, it wasn't Bill. I wouldn't have minded Bill and if he was in my part of the world I'd be bummed if he didn't stop by and see me. It was however an old shredder friend of yours that just moved to town. It was nice to have another play pal with 31's who knows how to use them! We had waaaay to much fun!

Heck, it was Saterday that Bill Astley was over your way in the M5 and told me about Jason and you going to play on sunday, wish I could have come over!! maybee later this summer.

I dropped into Laidlaw a couple of years ago, I was running out of daylight and wanted to camp out anyway. I of course made a note of the wind direction on approach, and gradually realized I was overshooting my intended touchdown spot by a large margin, and ended up halfway down the strip before touchdown. After I parked and tied down I realized why I made such a sloppy landing: the windsock had fallen down, and was just laying on the ground stretched out in the exact opposite direction of the actual wind, when I eyeballed it I was right over it and got fooled!

Bear Trap is my favorite desert strip, the caves thereabouts are fun to explore. The horses at Frenchmans damn near ate a friends 182 a few years back, he hiked to the top of Big Southern and found them munching on his plane upon his return, 8 K worth of damage! We are very lucky in Idaho to have such a choice of terrain to fly over.
Tom Simko

I have also accidentally landed downwind cus I have miss judged wind direction. I hate that. What I do now if terain permits is to cross midfield then turn downwind from there. I do this at about 70 mph about 800 agl. When crossing midfield I check the drift to confirm what I think is the correct wind direction. This works good when there is no sock, dust or smoke to give clues.

If you're GPS equipped, you can also check your groundspeed-versus- airspeed in the pattern to see what the wind aloft is dpoing. No guarantee that it's the same on the ground.
Here's a question, say the wind on the ground is blowing one way based on the windsock, but the wind aloft based on GPS groundspeed is blowing opposite. Whch way should ya land? Don't want a tailwind at touchdown, but don't want one on final either.

Eric

I forgot to mention the last part of the above story: when I took off the next morning, as I did not have the means to re-erect the windsock, I bunched it up and put a big rock on it. No info isn't a problem, eyeballing ground speed and using the GPS, besides just generally paying more attention, would have made it a non event. But I just sat there fat, dumb, and happy 'cause I KNEW what the wind was doing....or so I thought.

The hang glider and paraglider pilots have some pretty slick ways to determine wind direction on landing also, involving dropping flagged (survey tape) weights (small rock) and seeing what direction the tape lies out in upon touchdown, this involves keeping an eye on it of course, which has to add to the workload.



Tom Simko