[Music] [Music] welcome back to helicopter lessons in ten minutes or less I'm Jacob and in this video I'll cover the basics of understanding winds now this is important to note because taking off and landing into the wind is the most preferred technique because it requires less power and generally offers more controllability in the takeoff and landing now helicopter pilots are far more conscious of the wind speed and direction from what I found because we operate at lower air speeds and altitudes where wind is a bigger influence compared to our fixed-wing brethren our brethren who seem to only care about the winds during takeoff and landing but without further delay let's get started now as helicopter pilots we want to know wind direction and speed it affects navigation performance and even the direction that we fly towards in the event of emergencies and we have a few ways to identify this are these wind conditions starting with manmade and that's man-made indications so for as far as man-made indications probably the most prevalent one that you're gonna see and this is gonna be at every airfield are your wind socks so wind socks generally you have your pole with a wind sock it's gonna be located somewhere on the airfield probably closer to your your main runway but they generally weathervane into the wind with at least three knots of airspeed now if they're fully extended it's usually representing a fifteen knot wind on the airfield so spotting this early can be a pair should be a part of your before landing routine as well as your before takeoff routine but what if you're flying in an area other than an airfield and there's no windsock available well some other man-made indications for wind could be things like flags or banners so say you're flying along you're looking down every now and then and you just see some flags out waving in the wind well these are awesome indications because they're free they're just usually all over cities stuff like that you can look down and see some flags generally giving you the same concept as a windsock it's letting you know where the winds are coming from so as a pilot especially a helicopter pilot you should train yourself to always be monitoring for signs like this now another man-made indication that you can have is just while you're in flight checking your thing like your a sauce you're a wasps your ATIS things like that so these are your your automated weather service stations are your weather stations that are giving you some kind of indication of hey the winds are from this direction at this speed and by just pulling out your VFR sectional and taking a look around tuning up these radios you can start to build your situational awareness because you kind of build the picture of at this airfield maybe the winds are from the Northeast at this airfield they're out of the north and you can kind of start to paint that picture now the last man-made win determining tool that I'm going to cover here and kind of borderline man-made first Nature Made but smoke and dust clouds so as you're flying along you know maybe someone's got a campfire out there or somebody's driving on the dirt road stuff like that and it starts to have a plume of either smoke or dust well this is just an easy indication of where the winds are coming from but there's some some ticks tips and tricks for that so say you have your campfire here it's got the fire going to pull the smoke gently is gonna be rising and showing you some kind of indoor indication of where the winds are carrying that smoker dust now the more horizontal the plume the faster the wind the more vertical the slower the rain the wind but as a general rule of thumb a 45-degree angle here for rising smoke generally equates to about 10 to 15 knots of wind now moving on from man-made indications we'll get into some of the naturally occurring or the nature-made wind indications so some of the things you can look for just looking down at trees it's a big indication here if you see either the entire tree or the tops of trees starting to have some kind of leaned into it that's a good indication so in this example wind blowing from left to right it's blowing the top of the tree over also as far as trees that silvery underside of the leaves it's easier to see when you're flying downwind while there's more green when you're flying up when this because the wind is flipping that leaf over and it it has a slightly different color if you start to train your eye you can start to see that special when you're lower altitude flying closer to the trees now next indication that you can get it's just fields of tall grass now you can sometimes see the waves in these fields if the winds are strong enough generally you gotta have about 10 to 15 knots but you'll start to see in a field just grass waving along as you're flying over so the same concept can be applied to four Lakes so in lakes once you start to see waves this is kind of that natural indication that you can look forward to see where the winds are coming from further on the lakes say you have a lake over here you have these waves over here if you start to see white capping in the waves that's generally indication that the surface winds are getting greater than 15 knots now there's a lot of nautical references it'll you know break this apart and get even more into detail but generally if you start to see Whitecaps and waves that's probably getting indications of stronger winds greater than about 15 knots also for Lakes water generally smooth on the upwind side and it's generally more wavy on the downwind side so another indication to look for as generally because the wind kind of enters the lake and it has more time to affect the water the further it gets along the on the lake another thing for lakes sometimes you'll see a dock with some more boats let's just say forget a little dock here and pour in the drawing a more boat so more boats are generally going to point into the wind or the the direction of the mooring line so another telltale signs of this is just looking for the docks or anything that may be anchored because the mooring line is generally going to show you where the the wind is pushing an object that's been anchored or moored so another telltale sign for nature occurring is going to be looking for the presence of birds as you fly along birds sometimes get spooked or just you know they're taking off but just like us they want to take off and land into the wind so as you're flying along if you're noting you know the tops of trees a flock of birds taking off well that's probably an indication of where the winds are coming from because they generally want to take off into the wind so that they're you know getting the best chance that they can but that concludes part 1 of understanding the and part two I'm going to get into some of the indications that you get in the cockpit and some tips and tricks that you can kind of identify and narrow down exactly where the winds are in the event that you don't have the man-made indications or the nature-made indications but b2 or continued tune to turn into the next video once again I'm Jacob this has been helicopter lessons [Music]