Headwinds, why so much?

[Mistro]

I live in the US and observe that the weather basically travels from west to east. Many of my flights are long hauls going from east to west but more in the southern areas like the Caribbean and sometimes South America. It seems that 85-90% of the time I'm getting a headwind of some kind. I rarely get tail winds and to top it off, the winds are always in excess of 70kts. Is FSX hell bent on giving headwinds? Or does the general direction of flight (East-West, West-East) play a role in this? I use real world weather via REX.

[N. Chapman]

No that's just how the prevailing winds work

[Mistro]

No that's just how the prevailing winds work

Didn't quite understand your answer.

[BAW0343]

Prevailing winds - winds that blow predominantly from a single general direction over a particular point on the Earth's surface.

If the predominant winds are from west to east and you fly east to west, what do you expect to get?

[N. Chapman]

See here for more weather fun.

http://www.jeppesen.com/aviation/personal/aviation-weather.jsp#

[Mistro]

[quote]Prevailing winds - winds that blow predominantly from a single general direction over a particular point on the Earth's surface.

If the predominant winds are from west to east and you fly east to west, what do you expect to get?

[Dave W]

Mistro,

    The issue you raise may have to do with available data.   I do NOT know how FS gets winds aloft data from around the world but before it can do anything there must be some type of data available.   High altitude winds aloft can only come form a balloon with a transponder that can be tracked by radar or a balloon with a GPS that can transmit data to a receiver.  I don't know how often this happens in Central Africa.    It's possible that FS uses the last data update until it gets something new and that's going to be effected by high and low pressure areas at the time.
  Just guessing on this...

Dave