Matthew Law writes: > I experienced my first bout of real fear yesterday doing my second > hour of solo circuits. I was operating from 06/24 and after a > precautionary couple of circuits with my instructor he let me loose > in a crosswind situation. The wind was initially 220/10-12Kt, but > by the end of the hour was 180/10-18kt. With the wind in this > direction, there are Hangers and buildings causing turbulence > around the numbers, so I took heed of what my instructor had said > and aimed to touch down just after the numbers with plenty of speed > to aid in controlling the aircraft.
A few extra knots for gusts or turbulence is a good idea, but for a crosswind landing, it only makes things worse: while you'll need smaller control deflections during the approach, it guarantees you a long flare (you still have to bleed off the speed somewhere), and the flare is the hardest part of a crosswind landing. Talk to your instructor first, obviously, but if he agrees, try coming in for a crosswind landing with full flaps at the slowest safe speed (taking gusts and turbulence into consideration) -- you'll have to use some pretty dramatic control deflections during final, but the plane will touch down quickly and firmly with almost no flare. Retract the flaps as soon as the wheels touch the ground to keep the wind from picking up the plane again. > I found myself putting in some pretty big yoke and pedal > deflections to keep anywhere near the runway. Absolutely right -- to land in a crosswind, you have to be willing to take the rudder right to the stop, and to put in some pretty dramatic banks as well. I've never landed the 150/152 (my instructor took the controls in our intro flight, and I always flew bigger planes afterwards), but once you get into a 15-20 kt crosswind, you'll feel like you're landing on your wingtip rather than the gear. > This kind of unnerved me more and more as the flight went on. I > slammed it in almost every time. At one point it seemed to me that > I was running out of right rudder at the end of the flare to keep > the aircraft down the runway as the wind was trying to 'weather > cock' me into it. I've felt that way too. The important thing is to keep over the centreline at all costs, even if you're in a bit of a crab. Your plane can handle touching down in a slight crab if worse comes to worst (you might have to pay for a new tire or two), but normally, you can release the rudder a bit and then wham it back to full just before touchdown to realign the plane with the runway. If that doesn't work, then you're too far past the plane's crosswind-landing ability, and you need to find another runway (possibly at another airport). > This was mainly bad technique on my part, but got me thinking if it > would be hard to code in automatic and realistic turbulence near > upwind buildings in FGFS? Or even better, how about modelling the > cover from the wind of a building near the runway - so that when > you emerge from the cover of the building you are immediately hit > by the full force of the crosswind? This would help me get some > practice in on crossed controls landings and make me feel more at > home - just like a lightly loaded 150/152 in a high, gusty > crosswind :-) That would involve a very large amount of computation. In real life, you cannot *always* count on the gusts and turbulence in the same places, so you're just as well off training with pseudo-random stuff. Maybe someday we'll get into air-current computer, when we have a lot more computing power. All the best, David _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
