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Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 18:06:47 -0600
From: Snowbird <snbird@ibm.net>
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Subject: Re: sideslip landings: Help!
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To the original poster: I don't know why your CFI was so shaken
up.  As a student, I too remember plenty of landings where I either
"dropped the xwind correction" while flaring, or got so busy holding
the perfect xwind correction that I never flared.  We tried a couple
exercises and with those and a little practice it "clicked" like
everything else.

Roy Smith wrote:
 
> timf@ushandball.org wrote:
> > When I was learning crosswind landings, one of the things that 
> > worked well for me was to extend the downwind so when I turned on 
> > final I had about 3 miles to fiddle with the trim, test how much 
> > rudder and airleron it was going to take to keep lined up

The caveat here is that IME the wind is going to change as you near
the ground (sometimes this is good--I can remember at least one
landing where I couldn't straighten the plane and was planning
to go around, until I was right down in ground effect).  

Even if the wind *doesn't* change, the amount of xwind correction
is going to change through the flare as you slow up (the needed
wind correction roughly doubles as airspeed decreases by half).

So, nothing wrong with a nice long final (well, except ATC might
not grant it at a controlled field and it makes you hard to spot
at an uncontrolled field), but the perfect rudder and aileron 
correction you've been working out is going to change on short final 
and through the flare.

> If you are lucky enough to live in an area with wide open spaces and
> straight features on the ground (highway, section lines, pipeline,
> cablecut, etc), you can practice this without being in the pattern.  
> Just wait for a day when there is a good crosswind and fly down the 
> highway (or whatever) at 500-1000 AGL.  Practice keeping the axis of 
> the plane parallel with the "runway" while moving back and forth over > the centerline.

This is helpful, especially if done at slow airspeeds, but IME it 
didn't give me what I needed -- which was the visual cues to adjust
the wind correction and keep the plane straight through the flare
esp. when plane's nose is blocking the view over the nose.

The exercise which really helped me was to find a nice long wide
runway with a stiff crosswind, and *buzz* it multiple times (with
the tower's permission of course "cleared low approach").  My
CFI took charge of the throttle and kept us from touching the ground;
my job was to flare at the appropriate height and keep the plane
straight.  The nice long runway allows one to experiment.  A few
such passes and I seemed to "get it".

I had a big problem overcontrolling.  One tip from my CFI which
helped me avoid this: to adjust course and align with the centerline,
try briefly *taking out* a little rudder (to move right, if you're
holding left rudder, for example) or *taking out* a little aileron
(to move left, if you're holding right aileron for example).

Another tip from another CFI, count "one two three" in the flare
(one wheel touches, second wheel touches, roll aileron all the way
into the wind on three as soon as both wheels touch).  Helps remember
to roll that aileron in, and boy howdy when the wind is roaring it
makes a diff.

Good luck,
Snowbird


