Canopy Flight Heading Affected By Wind Direction?

[PrairieDoug 0]

If I'm flying my canopy at an angle to the wind in a neutral toggle position (both all the way up), will I maintain that heading or will the wind tend to shift the heading? I've heard that the canopy "doesn't know or care" about wind speed or direction as far as canopy air speed or rate of descent. Does the same apply to heading?

I'm pretty sure the wind will affect how I'm flying over the ground ("crabbing"), but will it alter the actual heading? My gut feeling is that the wind will tend to push the heading so I'm flying with the wind if I'm at an angle, but not if I'm headed straight into the wind.

I'm asking because I notice on final approach that I often have to make small adjustments to maintain my heading, and I'm wondering if that is caused by being slightly cross-wind. BTW, my canopy is a Sabre2 170 loaded at 1.1 lbs/ft2.

Thanks in advance for guidance.

[apoil 0]

Quote

If I'm flying my canopy at an angle to the wind in a neutral toggle position (both all the way up), will I maintain that heading or will the wind tend to shift the heading? I've heard that the canopy "doesn't know or care" about wind speed or direction as far as canopy air speed or rate of descent. Does the same apply to heading?

Not entirely true, but mostly.

If the wind direction is going up or down, you better believe it will affect your rate of decent.

Under ideal conditions, with a purely horizontal wind, blowing at a constant rate it will not affect your heading, air speed, or rate of descent, in pure steady state flight. (meaning control inputs are not changing).

As soon as things start to change, ie wind speed changes in speed or direction, or canopy drag profile changes (pulling the toggles, or changing the shape of your body) Then, yes, things can happen but it's difficult to predict exactly how especially since it's hard to understand clearly what the wind is doing (it tends to be swirly in three dimensions).

The steady state is very important for understanding flight dynamics, but many spout it as law without realizing that often we are not in steady state flight.

[quade 4]

Another thing to consider is the surface friction of the wind near the ground.

Generally speaking the wind velocity will be a bit faster further away from the surface. What this means is if you're crabbing to maintain your ground track, as you decend through the various wind speeds the amount of crab required to maintain the same ground track will also change.

Folks at a lot of drop zones can simply land straight into the wind no matter which way it is blowing so they might not experience this on a regular basis. At other drop zones, you're forced to land essentially in one of two directions so you might get a bit more practice as dealing with cross winds. Perris is one of those drop zones if you want to land on the grass.

quade -
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