X wind landing Q.

[Guest venquessa]

Something I have neglected to practice in simming that much is getting the plane straightened up when touching down in a strong X wind.I was thinking about this a bit and here's what I came up with.On approach you might have a 5 or 10 offest from center line due to wind. Landing like that is probably not good for the gear, certainly it will wear the tyres badly, possibly flat spotting them, which give vibration and they need replaced. If you land heavy and remember "grip" is directly related to force on the contact area of rubber (from driving sims :D), the plane may even attempt to roll up on you. You could even bust the gear off in the extreme or slap a wing tip into the deck.So I thought that, hitting the rudder hard over just in the flare to get the wheels track straight for touch down then straighting up to hold the plane straight would be the correct thing to do.However there are a number problems when you try this.1. The A/P doesn't like it. It will go to CWS wont it? That will then make you in control of the flare as well.2. If you straighten up even a second before touch down, then the plane will still be flying sideways across the runway, aided by the wind, so the wheel will still have lateral velocity on touch down.3. Because of 2 you tend to float across the runway. If the A/P is doing its job you should be on the centerline, yet when you straighten up a good 20knot X wind can blow you off the runwway, or at least well off the center line.So, I would suspect that either landing in up to the A/P rated X wind without straightening up in acceptable, or you have to fly the last few hundred feet down by hand, move over the up wind side of the runway, so that when you flare and straighten the wind has blown you back onto center line.Any thoughts advice of the real procedures?Thanks.PS. I have been attempting to find my limits (and the NGs) with wind. I managed to land, heavily but "ok'ish" in a 0 knot wind, with gusts at 70knots. It's not easy, you have stay fast and keep pushing her down into the gusts as she tries to soar. Then idle and float down the runway, remembering to almost literally force her down, if you let it float down to VREF (with no wind correction added), when the gust drops you stall and hit the tarmac hard.A 0 gusting 140 wind, was too much though and resulted in the plane being slammed into the tarmac at about 0 IAS.

[Guest Nickman]

I wouldn't worry about the tires that much. They're replaced I don't know how many times. I've once flown on a CO 757 that was landing in a crosswing, and the pilot was crabbing it to where I could almost see the runway. When we touched down, he quickly turned it to the centerline with the rudder and you could feel a quick jolt along with some tire screeching. I think the tires can handle something like that, especially since they're replaced so often.Nick B.Continental Airlines Virtual 737NG Pilothttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/800driver.jpg--AMD Athlon XP 3200+ @ 2.2 Ghz (Equal to 2.8 ghz)400W Power supply3x 80 mm Case FansSoyo VIA KT600 Dragon PlusnVidia GeForce FX 5200 128 mb2 x 512 PC400100 GB Western DigitalMicrosoft Sidewinder Precision 2

[crvm 0]

"So I thought that, hitting the rudder hard over just in the flare to get the wheels track straight for touch down then straighting up to hold the plane straight would be the correct thing to do.1. The A/P doesn't like it. It will go to CWS wont it? That will then make you in control of the flare as well." No since rudder is not control colume."...If the A/P is doing its job you should be on the centerline, yet when you straighten up a good 20knot X wind can blow you off the runwway, or at least well off the center line." Well once on the ground there is no centerline guidence on the RW NG or this aircraft. You MUST manually disconnect the A/P atfer T/D. Well I think if the wind is going good maybe one should be manually flying it down. Don't really know, good question for Brad Marsh though ;-)... Best Wishes,[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4][h3]P M D G's 747-400[/h3][h4]coming to a runway near you[/h4][/font color]Caution! Not a real pilot, but do play one on TV ;-)AMD 64 3200+ | ASUS KV8 DELUXE | GFORCE 5700 ULTRA @535/1000 | Maxtor 6Y080M0 SATA 80 GIG | 512 DDR 400 | Windows Xp Pro | Windows Xp Pro 64 |

[SAS263 1]

Just some thoughts (guesses).As you know there are specific limits when it comes to allowable x-wind. I

[mauriceb 0]

I don't know if this will help with PDMG (I'm new to the PDMG simulation), but there are 2 normal procedures when landing in a crosswind in a small plane. Which one you use is mostly dependent on pilot's preference & comfort.The first procedure is to 'crab' the airplane until just before the flare. As you are ready to flare, you kick in the rudder & straighten the nose so that it is aligned with the runway. The trick here is to also lower the upwind wing at the same time so that the plane does not start turning. Depending on the strength of the crosswind, you may end up touching down on one wheel first & then lowering the other wheel.The second procedure is to maintain a forward slip on the approach, meaning you keep the upwind wing low while simultaneously keeping the nose straight & aligned with the runway all the way to touch-down (also likely on one wheel). I found this method more tricky in real life than my preferred crabbing approach when I used to fly Cessna's.Note that in both procedures the controls are crossed (right rudder - left aileron or left rudder - right aileron)

[Guest MarcoAviator]

>>The second procedure is to maintain a forward slip on the>approach, meaning you keep the upwind wing low while>simultaneously keeping the nose straight & aligned with the>runway all the way to touch-down (also likely on one wheel). I>found this method more tricky in real life than my preferred>crabbing approach when I used to fly Cessna's.>That's actually a "sideslip" or "wing low" approach. In the forward slip the plane is yawed away from the direction of movement ... in the sideslip on the other the plane's longitudinal axis is aligned with the direction of movement ... the plane is just banked.there's 2 problems that I know of with crabbing with an airliner:1 - airline companies for what I know, have rules against using it because it makes passengers mighty uncomfy and nervous. 2 - (and this might be more important) the engines in most common airliners are hanging down from under the wing. A wing low touch down might very well bend the wing to the point of having an engine strike. Single engine planes don't have the same problem, especially high wing planes. These is just what I heard ... I don't know for sure and I don't have material to back this up, so I may be wrong ...

[mauriceb 0]

I stand corrected about the term I used :-). You are quite right about it being a sideslip rather than a forward slip. For your other point however, I don't think you are quire right about what the airliners do. I go & watch airliners landing at the Toronto airport quite often, & whenever there is a crosswind, they always crab during the approach whenever I have watched them (& in some cases, rather severe crabbing).It would be interesting to hear from an airline captain to see what they are told to do. If they are told not to crab, then most of them are ignoring this (at least in the Toronto airport) as far as I can see.As far as landing on one wheel is concerned, I believe this is the only way to avoid drifting during the actual landing and I have seen many airliners touch down on one wheel as well. It does does not have to be a really low wing touchdown, just low enough to prevent the drift.Comments from airline pilots would be be very appreciated.Thanks

[Guest MarcoAviator]

>I stand corrected about the term I used :-). You are quite>right about it being a sideslip rather than a forward slip.>For your other point however, I don't think you are quire>right about what the airliners do. Ok. I am dumb. I mis-typed what I wanted to say.I typed:"there's 2 problems that I know of with crabbing with an airliner:"Wrong. What I meant to type instead is:"there's 2 problems that I know of with SIDE-SLIPPING with an airliner:"Airliners SHOULD crab and SHOULD NOT side-slip (again, to the limit of the my knowledge).Sorry for the confusion. Doh.

[mauriceb 0]

No problemo :-)

[Guest leadZERO]

Is the side-slip approach what I've heard referred to as a cross-coordinated approach?I personally tend to fly my approach crabbed until about 2nm out when I rudder out of the wind and add a touch of bank into the wind. The only reason I do this is when I'm hand flying it's a little easier for me to tell where I am in relation to the centerline and make any minute last minute corrections. This may be incorrect though; I only do it because I always flew smaller props cross-coordinated for xwind landings when I was learning to fly in sims.

[Guest wesl]

Real life airliners can land in a crab in a strong wind. New generation autoland systems can do 25 knots crosswind and will land in a 5 degree crab. I know there are some sites that have videos of some horrendous landings into Hong Kong. the only time any of the planes were on the centerline is when they taxied in.

[mauriceb 0]

Not sure about your first question since both crabbing & sideslipping necessitate crossed controls.The reason I preferred 'crabbing' in a real Cessna was because I found that the plane almost automatically assumed the correct crab angle with only minor corrections necessary along the way. When approaching with a sideslip instead, I always found it much more difficult to remain in the runway center line. I learned to fly in a small airport with only one runway, so crosswind landings became almost natural to me at that time.I do find though that crosswind landings in a Cessna in FS is much more difficult that I recall in real life. It seems that you do not get the visual clues as quickly in the sim and I've never been able to master crosswind landings in FS.

[Guest leadZERO]

I dunno, I've never flown in real life. The part that was hardest for me flying a crosswind landing in FS is like you say, a visual cue, I'm never able to tell if my track is on the centerline. I attribute it to poor visual limitations imposed by a "small" monitor (relative to your actual field of view). With cross coordinating I'm able to more easily tell if I'm heading down the centerline. Best crosswind landing I ever did was crosswind of 60 knots gusting to 70 in a beach 58... I had to do that with a mix of crosscoordinating and crabbing, was just playing around, but it was a challenge.

[CF104 0]

Actually crabbing doesn't require cross control input. All you're doing is maintaining a course by adjusting your heading for wind drift.As for a crosswind procedure, our pilots are trained to crab into the wind with no bank input during the approach. It's the procudure at the flare that takes some practice. They use the GPWS altitude calls and rad alt as reference along with how strong the crosswind is to determine a height to kick the nose straight. Anywhere from 20 ft. for a light crosswind to just before touchdown on a heavy crosswind. The trick is to kick the nose straight and keep the wings level without drifting too far off the centre line at touchdown. Done too soon and you will drift.BTW, unless the conditions warrant, the auto pilot is not used during the approach by our crews. If it is required, they disconnect at DH and hand fly to touch down. Not too many Cat II and III runways in Canada.Cheers,JohnBoeing 727/737 & Lockheed C-130/L-100 Mechanichttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/ng_driver.jpg

[Guest cactuscap]

The short answers:Autopilot (autoland) --The autopilot