Visual Illusions and Downwind Turns
RC PILOTS WHO TALK ABOUT downwind stalls are sometimes chided for harboring naive superstitions about the wind. Aerodynamicist Ralph Gross has listed seven such superstitions and fallacies in a paper titled "Airplanes and the Wind." Don Lowe passed along the information in his "Flying Lowe" column (Radio Control Modeler, May, 1994); Gross' list, as excerpted by Lowe, reads as follows: 1) As you turn upwind, you will gain altitude and/or airspeed. 2) As you turn downwind, you will lose altitude and/or airspeed. 3) As you are turning from upwind to crosswind, the wind can get under a wing and cause the airplane to roll into a steeper bank.
