The question we get most often on a grey morning is whether we are still coming. Usually the answer is yes.
Modern airframes handle drizzle better than people expect. What they do not handle is gusting — not the steady speed, the difference between the lulls and the peaks. A steady fifteen is a workable day. Eight gusting to twenty-two is not, because the aircraft is correcting constantly and the camera never settles.
Gusts also make the battery estimate unreliable, which matters most on the long straight lines of a mapping grid.
So when we stand a flight down on a day that looks perfectly calm from your office window, it is almost always the gust spread rather than anything you can see.
