Pilot Brad’s Flying Blog

Lesson Date: 06.04.08
Flight Time: 1.5 (Elite Sim)

Today we headed back into the sim for more holding pattern practice, however, before doing so Nick and I sat down to talk about a few concepts; wind correction and the 5-Ts.

As I discovered the other day, flying a holding pattern in no-wind conditions is relatively straightforward.  You get yourself to the fix, then initiate a standard-rate 180° turn, then 1-minute of straight and level flight (on the outbound heading), followed by another turn and another 1-minute leg.  Lather, rinse and repeat.  I know, I am over-simplifying a bit, but you get my point. 

Now let’s introduce a nice 20 knot wind into the equation.  You can bet things are going to change a bit.  With the addition of wind, you must correct your headings to compensate for the winds, adjust the times of your inbound and outbound legs, or most likely do both.  All of a sudden I felt as if flying a hold was about to get a whole lot more interesting.  Fortunately, Nick taught me some easy tools to adjust for the winds.

To correct for a crosswind Nick explained that the common practice is to fly the outbound leg with 3X the wind correction required on the inbound leg.  For example, if you must fly a 10° wind correction to hold course on the inbound leg, then you would fly a 30° correction on the outbound leg.  This method results in a strange egg shaped holding pattern, but keeps the aircraft on the holding side of the holding course.  It seemed kind of strange to me at first, but it does makes sense when you consider that you really don’t want to be flying all over the sky re-intercepting inbound leg each time around.  In addition, ATC is going to expect you to be on one side of hold side of the fix.

The second method of wind correction deals with the time of the legs.  If you have a headwind on the inbound leg, less ground will be covered in 1-minute, and you will obviously experience a tailwind and faster ground speed on the outbound leg.  Since the goal is to fly a consistent 1-minute inbound leg, adjustments to the outbound leg length (time) will need to be made.  To do this, you would fly the first outbound leg to a time of 1-minute, and after completing the outbound end turn you would track the time it takes to fly the inbound leg and cross the fix.   You then adjust the next outbound leg by half the difference between the inbound and outbound legs you just flew.  Clear as mud right? 

For example, suppose you flew a 1:00 outbound leg, and after the turn it took you 1:30 to fly the inbound leg (to the fix).  This means that there is headwind on the inbound leg, and the outbound leg should be shortened to compensate for it.  In this scenario, you would subtract 0:15 (half 0:30 difference) from the next outbound leg.  Flying an outbound leg of 0:45 should result in an inbound leg of 1:00, but further adjustments may still have to be made.  Obviously, if you found that the inbound leg was shorter, then you would add rather than subtract time from the outbound leg.

Sufficiently overloaded by wind correction techniques, Nick then introduced me to the 5-Ts.  I know, some of you reading this are going to say, “But there are 6 Ts or even 7!”  Yes, some instructors teach 6 or 7, but we’re sticking with 5 for now.  The 5-T’s is simply a way to remember the actions you need to take when upon crossing the fix and entering a hold.  They are Turn, Time, Twist, Throttle and Talk.

Turn - Turn to a heading to set-up an intercept for the inbound course
Time - Start time
Twist - Twist the OBS to the inbound course
Throttle - Set power for an acceptable holding speed
Talk - Tell ATC you are entering the hold

Now that I’ve been taught the 5-Ts, I’ve been told that from now on I am expected to announce (out loud) the 5-T’s as I go through them.  That sounds like a good idea to me, and we headed to the sim for some practice.

Again, Nick set me up for several holding scenarios, however this time things were a bit more challenging.  First, he put my closer to the fix so that I had less time to figure things out, then he then turned up the winds in the simulator, and now his scenarios involved DME holds.  A DME hold is where you use a DME distance from a VOR as the fix, rather than the VOR itself. 

Once I was able to get myself to the fix and establish myself in the hold I had only minor issues flying the pattern even with a good stiff wind.  The wind correction techniques Nick taught me earlier really seemed to work well.  The real challenge for me has been performing the visualizations to determine; How the hold is oriented in relation to the fix, from where am I approaching the fix, and which form of entry to use.  While I have always been considered to be a visual thinker, I’ve found it necessary to draw the scenarios on my kneeboard in order to keep it all straight, and I can see where this is going to take a lot of practice to master.

We flew the sim today for 1.5 hrs but it didn’t feel that long, probably because we would occasionally break to talk about a particular situation.  I flew a variety of scenarios in that time, and while my performance was acceptable at this stage, I need to work on calculating the headings for my inbound and outbound legs, and remembering to vocalize and perform the 5-Ts when entering the hold.   My next lesson is scheduled for a week from today, and Nick tells me we will go out to the practice area for more holding practice.  Good, I need it.