Wind Drift Tracking Challenge
Maintain a ground track under variable wind with real-time drift and accuracy feedback.
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Hold the selected ground track to the end of the leg. Press Start: the aircraft begins on the track heading with no wind correction and a hidden wind starts pushing it. Steer with ◀ 5° / ◀ 1° / 1° ▶ / 5° ▶, the cyan ring on the aircraft (drag it, or use the arrow keys on it) or the slider; the aircraft turns to the command at standard rate.
Watch two things: the drift angle (the difference between your heading and your track over the ground) and the cross-track error. First stop the drift — find the heading whose track is parallel to the course — then turn a little further into the wind to get back inside the band, and take the extra correction out when you arrive. On Medium the wind shifts once, on Hard it gusts and shifts twice: the drift angle tells you before the cross-track error does.
At the end the wind is revealed: its direction and speed along the leg, the shifts and when they happened, and the correction that would have held the track. Replay re-flies your inputs with the same wind, exactly. The seed fixes the wind: share it (or the challenge link shown in the readout) to fly the identical challenge.
Assumption: the wind patterns are seeded training patterns (steady, smooth shifts, sinusoidal gusts) — not a meteorological model; a constant TAS; standard-rate turns with instantaneous roll; still-air TAS and true directions in one frame. The ±0.5 NM band and the score weights are training conventions of this platform, not FAA tolerances.
Flight: fixed 0.1-s steps; heading toward the command at 3°/s (shortest way); ground velocity = TAS along the mid-step heading + the wind at the step's start time (the IFR Trainer’s wind model: the wind blows FROM its direction and the whole air mass moves with it). Drift angle = ground track − heading; cross-track error = distance from the straight desired track (+ right). Samples every simulated second.
Wind patterns (fixed by the seed, the level and the time along the leg): Easy 10–20 kt steady; Medium 12–25 kt with one smooth shift of 20°–40° (and up to 8 kt) between 25 % and 60 % of the leg plus a slow ±5° / ±4 kt swing; Hard 15–30 kt, two shifts of 25°–55° and gusts (three sinusoids, periods 9–41 s, about ±8 kt) with a ±8° wobble. Same seed → same wind; replays re-run the recorded commands through the same steps, so a replay is exactly the flight you flew.
Score: RMS cross-track error, maximum, share of samples within ±0.5 NM, score = 70 × share + 30 × max(0, 1 − RMS / 0.5 NM). The correction shown after the flight is the wind triangle for the course (PHAK ch. 16; the same function as the Wind Triangle calculator).
- FAA Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, FAA-H-8083-25C, ch. 16 Navigation — wind triangle, drift and wind correction angle
- FAA Instrument Flying Handbook, FAA-H-8083-15B (2012), ch. 9 Navigation Systems — “Tracking” (hold a heading, recognise drift, correct with an angle greater than the drift, then bracket)
- Cross-tool: the IFR Trainer’s wind model (wind from a direction, the air mass drifting the aircraft); seeded training wind patterns
- Platform training convention: ±0.5 NM band and the 70/30 score weights (stated on the page; not an FAA tolerance)