Complex wind calculations (true air speed) in excel

[pantsmonkey]

Hello folks my boss is at me to try and make manual flight calculations a thing of the past again. He has asked if I can locate a method of automating ground speed plus wind variations so he doesn't have to use a flight calculation slide rule.

I have located the required equations and am wondering if these calculations can be done using excel.

The mathematical formulas that equate to the results of the E6B wind calculator are as follows: (desired course is A, true airspeed is B, wind direction is C, wind velocity is D. A and C are angles. B and D are in any unit of speed you choose as long as it's used consistently). π is 3.14159...

Wind Correction Angle:

True ground speed:

Wind Correction Angle, in degrees, as it might be programmed into a computer (which includes conversion of degrees to radians and back):

True ground speed is calculated as:

Basically he will plonk in the direction hes going and the speed he is planning on traveling @ the wind and its speed into 4 different cells and it will calculate his true ground speed between the various way points on his journey.

 

[Dan Waterloo]

Hi pantsmonkey,

These functions are all available in Excel.
SIN is sin
COS is cos
ASIN is arcsin (the inverse sin funciton whiich is the same as sin to the negative, I believe, though my trig is a bit rusty here)
PI() is a funciton that returns the value of pi
SQRT returns the positive square root.

You can get B squared by writing B^2.

All the best.

 

[Dan Waterloo]

There is also a RADIANS function you can use to convert degrees to radians and a DEGREES function to convert radians to degrees.

 

[edvwvw]

This is a lot more complex than it first looks, you also need to know the altitude that your boss expects to fly as you will need to correct the speed:

Aircraft have 3 speeds - the speed that the aircraft thinks it is doing Indicated Air Speed

- the speed the air thinks the aircraft is doing True Air Speed (depends on Altitude and Temperature)

- The ground speed (depends on wind direction)

It strikes me that if your boss can afford an aircraft he can afford the relatively tiny amount for a proprietary piece of software.

edvwvw

 

[mark hansen]

There are many spreadsheets already done that have this stuff in there. I use one at home when "flying" Flight simulator.

Try Google(ing) "E6B spreadsheets"

Some even have knee board tabs to fill out and plop on the knee board where you can document VOR info and other frequencies informaiton along with wind speed info.