MATLAB: True heading and Wind direction

aircraftairplaneheadwindtailwindtrue headingwind

Hello,
Given I have wind value, wind direction and true direction
May i know if in matlab, we have a function which resolves the wind into components parallel and perpendicular to my true direction?
In the end, I want to know if we have headwind or tailwind component?
Thanks

Best Answer

There isn’t one specifically, but you can create one easily enough:
windhx = @(C,W,S) S*[sind(abs(C-W)); cosd(abs(C-W))]; % [Crosswind; Headwind] = windhx(Course, WindDirection, WindSpeed)
This takes aircraft course ‘C’ (the direction of intended flight), wind direction ‘W’, both in degrees, and windspeed ‘S’, in whatever units you want (usually knots). It produces a (2x1) vector of crosswind component in the first row, and headwind component in the second row. Negative values indicate a Left crosswind and a Tailwind, respectively.
See the Wikipedia article on Tailwind for more information.