Reading the Wind Before You Launch

Wind at ground level tells you almost nothing about wind at eighty metres. Here is how our pilots read a site before the props turn.

Every launch starts the same way: hands out, phone away, two minutes of standing still. Ground gusts are shaped by whatever is around you, and a hedge or a parked van can make a site feel calm when the air above it is not.

Look up instead. Cloud shadows crossing a field give you direction and rough speed. Trees tell you gust rhythm. If the top third of a tall tree is moving and the lower two thirds are not, there is shear waiting for you, and shear is what drains a battery.

Our airframes hold a level horizon in gusts to forty knots, but holding a horizon costs power. Plan the return leg into the wind while you still have the margin for it, not after the low-battery warning.