Dear friends and followers, today I'll be answering a recently asked question:
"What is a windsock and how does it work?"
A windsock is a conical shape textile tube,
which resembles a giant sock, hence it's name,
design to indicate wind direction and relative wind speed.
It's normally placed next to the runway or a helipad
so that pilots can easily see it
after landing upon the runway or coming in for landing.
It's also indicated on most airport ground charts with this little symbol
During night operation it is well lit either from the ground or lamps installed within the sock.
It's general purpose is to give the pilots a quick reference
as to where the wind is coming from
and approximate the wind speed.
Before accelerating upon take-off you take a quick glance at it
so you can give the necessary rudder inputs while strolling down the runway.
To determine the wind direction you look at your compas,
check your heading and then
estimate the pointing angle of the windsock
relative to your heading.
The wind direction is the opposite of the direction in which the windsock is pointing
which means if we have a wind blowing from
the west at 270 degrees with 10 knots for example
the windsock would point towards heading east
because of the direction it is blowing in
I'll show you this in an example
Okay now, this example we're looking at a windsock out of a birds perspective
so we're looking on top of a windsock.
As you can see the wind is blowing from west
towards this direction
so it's actually blowing from the west towards the east.
As you can see the windsock
is pointing into east direction
so it would be 090 but
because you know the wind is coming from the other side
we just have to calculate the opposite heading of that
so that would be 270 degrees.
So more or less
anywhere where the windsock is poiting
the pointing in the opposite of that will give you your wind direction,
it's as easy as that.
But why the does the sock have these red and white rings?
They are there for to measure the wind velocity.
Each ring indicates a windspeed of 5 knots
So 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 knots
But in this example here you can see
that the windsock start tilting at this point, so actually only two rings are fully blown up
one and two which sums up as 10 knots
and wind isn't strong enough to fully blow up the rest of them
so this indicates a windspeed of 10 knots.
And know it's how you read the windspeed of the windsock.
So as we look at this video here
we have one and two rings fully blown up and the last three are slightly tilted downwards
so that sums up 2 rings times 5 knots is respectively a windspeed of 10 knots.
But in the same time you can see
that the sock sometimes is fully blown up and flapping about
so you could expect some gusts as well.
In the background I can see the runway and knowing it's heading of 260 degrees
I assume that a sock is farely parallel to it
so I guess the wind direction will be approximately 260 degrees.
So not too bad would be an estimated 260 degrees 10 knots and gusts
and if we compare that to the ATIS readout I think we got fairly close.
Again a windsock is only for a quick reference.
If you want a proper wind information you would have to listen to the ATIS
or ask Tower Control
So you can see that there are fairly easy to interpretate and a great help to get a quick wind information.
There are easy to install and cheap to maintain
and it is required by flight regulations that even the smallest airport has at least one visible windsock.
I hope you enjoyed this video and I've answered another aviation related question for you.
So give me a thumbs up, subscribe my channel and if you have further questions
don't hesitate to comment below
I'll be happy to answer your questions via a video blog.
Thanks for watching and see you next time.
Your Captain Joe.
Look out for the windsock the next time you'll be sitting in your passenger seat.
You will most probably see them as we taxi towards the runway
and maybe you may guess the wind direction and the windspeed before actually taking-off. So good luck with that.