11/6 GPS navigation probably worked!!

You launch your rocket with the wind blowing from west to east. The rocket goes straight up but on the way down it gets carried to the east by the wind. How do you get back to the pad?

The parachute, just like a glider, has some forward airspeed. (About 12 MPH the way it\'s setup now.)

As long as the wind speed is less than that, the rocket can make progress even upwind. It knows how to compensate steering for the wind (in theory, anyway).

Suppose the wind is 8 MPH, and the pad is straight upwind from the rocket. The rocket faces into the wind and flies at 12 MPH airspeed, so it makes 12-8 = 4 MPH toward the pad.

If the wind is faster than the airspeed, then it doesn\'t work (and as a matter of fact, the software will get confused and won\'t even figure out how to steer upwind - but I have ideas on how to fix that...)

I get the theory. My glider didn\'t. Clearly I wasn\'t any good at compensating for the wind.

If the wind speed is close to the airspeed of the glider, it\'s harder than you\'d think to avoid drifting downwind. There are only a narrow range of angles that are close enough to \"dead upwind\" to make progress.

If you\'re flying R/C and don\'t have a very exact idea of the angle of flight vs. the wind direction, it\'s really hard to keep it pointed upwind. (It\'s much easier if you\'re inside the airplane flying it - then you just look at the ground to see which way you\'re being blown.)

--Dave