Boy, how many times have I heard from fellow model yachters, "The wind is really fluky today…". To explain why this statement is spoken so often is rather simple. As air moves it is called wind, the greater the altitude the straighter it blows. When wind is blowing closer to the earth, its flow starts to become less straight.
The reason for this is, as air flows along the earth, it has to move through and around objects. When the wind does this it has to change direction and loose and gain in strength. When the wind changes direction and/or strength, it becomes fluky. Take a look at the above picture on the effects of ground objects to the wind, as the wind blows over the bushes and trees, it becomes turbulent. This turbulent wind is caused by air moving along the ground and gets broken up by friction of objects on land. As luck would have it, the pond at which you are sailing usually has such ground objects around it. When this occurs, what you the sailor has to put up with, is all that turbulent wind on the water.
When wind moves around an object, eddies are created that makes life for a sailor a sailing hell. The effects of wind eddies on the water are, air moving in short bursts of wind in different directions, heavy oscillating wind patterns, and spots on the water that is close to the shore where there is no wind. These three examples are the nice ones. There are some fluky winds that can be down right nasty (more on those in an upcoming issue).
The important point for the model yachter is sailing on a small to medium, land-bound pond or lake is that there are special wind characteristics that you won't find on a large lake. Because of this, the model yachter has to learn how to sail on a pond that has ground friction around. All ponds, no mater where they are, suffer from ground friction to some extent. And all ponds, at some time or another, have good wind and no wind.
The main reason that a pond has good wind, even with ground friction, is because the wind is strong enough to make the turbulence not has noticeable. This strong wind makes the wind flow around objects better with a lower amount of change effects. Don't get me wrong, there is still turbulence, but the negative turbulent effects are not as noticeable as when the wind is not as strong.
If the model yachter gains a better understanding on the cause and effect of ground friction, it will make a better sailor out of him or her. Just saying the wind is fluky and not knowing how to sail in it will cause less than fulfilling day of sailing. Well, good wind until next month!