Cuban Eight in a head wind

[Keith Black]

I'd like some advice on the best way to perform a symmetrical Cuban Eight with a strong head wind.

Today I was out practicing and was struggling with trying to keep the two halves even and the center downlines at 45 deg. and crossing in the middle. Obviously the wind is pushing the plane back when going into the first 1/2 Cuban so I know that it is necessary to drive into the wind, but to do this I need to keep the plane's nose forward for a longer period of time than normal (on the upline). Then when it's time to come around for the down wind portion it seems that I have to flip the plane a bit too abruptly in order to get the 45 deg downline centered before the wind pushes me back to far. It's at the transition between driving into the wind and reversing directions that I'm not sure about. Is it acceptable for the plane to relatively quick go from nose forward to nose backward? If I don't do this I get blown back to quickly, but doing so doesn't look very graceful. Also, in doing this it's hard to keep the loop perfectly round through 5/8ths.

When going into the second 1/2 Cuban after completing the centered downline I want to make the 5/8th loop nice and smooth, but if I don't pull pretty hard at the bottom of the downline and get the nose pointing up then backwards the wind will take me too far down field. This pull up does not look as smooth as I think it should and for a long time I practiced it with a smooth pull up and would go to far down field. To keep the halves even, left to right, I have to pull much more than is visually appealing. Of course, by doing this is also looks like I'm pinching the bottom loop but in reality the loop is probably more even than it looks. I'm just concerned that this approach does not look very good and may end up getting downgraded. 

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Keith Black

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