Wind Socks

[JJ Campbell]

Since my cataract surgery, my distance vision is 20/20 - not bad for 74! However, at 500' above pattern altitude I really can't tell what the wind sock is doing. If I can even find the darned thing.

I'm working on collecting Aviation Ambassador stamps so I am finding myself more-and-more at airports w/o AWOS or even in range of an another airport that has AWOS. Often there is zero traffic at the airport and if someone is on duty, they are often out cutting the grass and not near the radio.

Are there any tricks or techniques to improve my wind sock reading ability?

[3Dreaming]

There are so many things you can use to read the wind heading into an airport. Watch for smoke, look at the water surface on lakes and ponds, look for dust from a gravel road, look at fields of crops for the flow of the wind, anyway you get the idea. For a last resort make a 360° turn and watch the ground speed on your GPS. The section of the turn with the lowest ground speed is into the wind. Just be aware that you can have a difference in wind from in flight to the surface due to shear.

[fatsportpilot]

You aren't the only one who has trouble reading wind socks! I also have 20/20 vision and unless the sock is big I often need to look very closely to see it. 3Dreaming is right and sometimes the best thing to do is look for smoke or dust. I live in a major agricultural area so I'll almost always have dust from some tractor or a small fire to look for. If not then sometimes you just need to make an educated guess and get ready to land and then you'll see the sock more easily, and then you can abort if you have a bad tail wind or something.

[bitten192]

Weather Underground https://www.wunderground.com/

[Warmi]

Forget wind socks ..... sometimes I have hard time spotting the damn runway ...