I recall when I was 12 taking a ride in a tiny Piper and as the pilot came in over the trees he kicked the rudder to line up with the runway and I swallowed my gum. I didn't know planes could skid. Never forgot that.Using FS9, on final in my C172 I have a tough time staying lined up on the rwy centerline - back and forth, etc. Every plane in which I've been a passenger seems to have it nailed - very little banking on final - at least from what I feel through my seat. Is that because of using autopilot until just over the threshold?I thought I'd copy that guy of long ago so I unchecked FS9's Autorudder option. Wanted to see if that would help me slip sideways till on centerline, then slip the other direction so I'm looking straight down the rwy. (Can't afford rudder controls just yet so I'm twisting my Saitek AV8R stick to control the rudder.) Holy mackerel! Even if I twist it gently, the ball in the turn coordinator goes wild and the aircraft banks! I thought ailerons were the only control surfaces that would cause a bank.Do I have the right idea but am I implementing it the wrong way?Thanks for any insight, Mudboy

First recalibrate the stick just to be sure everything is set correctly.Then look in the calibration menu and find the settings. You should be able to set some of the sensitivity settings for some of the axis' on your stick. Of course this all depends on what stick and if you have the latest drivers installed for it.KJ

Generally, there's little good reason to use either control, aileron or rudder, independently. When you mentioned the 'tiny Piper', perhaps something like the J-3? The pilot very likely was either correcting for crosswind and/or using a forward slip to increase the descent rate without increasing airspeed (since the aircraft had no flaps). It's unlikely that the rudders were being used without a corresponding aileron input.In flight simulator with autorudder enabled, you won't be able to compensate for crosswind by using side slip. The idea of side slip is the lowering the upwind (the direction from which the crosswind is coming) wing without allowing the aircraft to bank by using just enough opposite rudder to keep the nose of the aircraft pointing towards the runway centerline. Note that this involves the use of both the rudder and ailerons.So yes, you are on to something. You can perform side slips at altitude to get a feel for how the aircraft behaves. Fly straight and level at 2000 agl. Bank 5 degrees to the right, but as you roll into the turn apply opposite rudder (and appropriate elevator pressure) so that the aircraft continues straight and level. Now roll back to level, again using enough rudder to keep the ball centered. Repeat to the left. Getting the control pressures 'just right' so that the aircraft responds smoothly with as little deviation from heading and altitude as possible is your goal.

What you probably experienced on that flight when you were young, was the pilot sideslipping the aircraft, and unfortunately, sideslipping is something which a lot of aircraft in FS do not emulate well, so you have to overcook it a lot to get it to happen. It's worth noting at this point that a sideslip is not normally intended to correct misalignment with the runway - although you can sort of use it for that purpose if you are very skilled - but rather it is to make the aircraft rapidly lose some lift so that you drop down lower if you are looking like you are going to land long or overshoot the touchdown markers on the runway. It can also assist you in fighting a crosswind too though, so it's worth picking the direction in which you choose to yawIf you simply kick on rudder (either in FS, or in a real aircraft), what happens is that the aircraft yaws in the direction you command, but because that is not the direction you are initially traveling, pointing off to one side briefly does not overcome the inertia your aircraft has from its original direction of travel, so when you centralise the rudder, you'll pretty much be heading the same way you were, apart from maybe a slight deviation caused by the prop thrusting you sideways for a second or so.To execute a sideslip, you have to 'cross the controls', i.e. put the rudder over one way, and the ailerons over the other way. If you do it correctly, you should yaw sideways and pitch down slightly, losing a fair bit of height in the process.If you hold out your right hand flat in front of you, yaw it to the left and then roll it to the right a little and move it away from you, that's what your aircraft should be doing (you can go the opposite way too of course). But...It is important to note that it can be dangerous to do it at too low a speed, because effectively what you are doing, is using the fuselage to block the airflow to one of the wings to reduce the lift on that wing (that loss of lift would be about where your thumb is on the above example with your hand), as well as altering the direction of the airflow over the wings in general to make them less efficient, and cause a bit more drag too, from flying sideways.All of that means that if you sideslip near the stall speed, you can stall the wing on the side where the airflow is blocked by the fuselage, because a large proportion of the wing will suddenly have no airflow over it. If enough of that wing gets the airflow blocked, and the airflow over the rest of that wing reduces speed because of the drag you induce when flying in a sideways motion, it can stall that wing, and that means you'll go into a spin (which is caused when one wing stalls and the other is still flying). That's the bit FS does not do well, but even so, it's a good to get into the habit of using caution with a sideslip in FS, since if you one day decide to do it in a real aircraft, you'll remember the points to look out for.On a real aircraft, you can usually judge how far you are pushing things in a sideslip by the protesting noise you get from the airflow, which sounds like the wind has suddenly picked up very strongly; what you are hearing is the noise of the air passing the fuselage in an unusual direction and getting turbulent, which of course also increases the drag and contributes to the loss of height that you are aiming for when doing a sideslip. You probably won't hear that in FS though.Have a crack at it and watch the replay from the tower view and you will certainly recognise what your aircraft is doing, because you'll have seen it a million times in movies, usually with a DC-3 if it is a really cliche movie.Hope that helps a bit. Al

Thanks Alan and everyone. I'll try everything. Can you clue me in on how real-world pilots line up on the centerline and stay there (assuming no crosswind or other factors)? I position myself right down the center of the "feather" but very shortly I find I've drifted slightly left or right and have to bank slightly (autorudder on) to get on center again. Sometimes I don't apply enough aileron and have to hold it longer than I think I ought; Other times I overshoot slightly to the other side of center and have to bank back again, so there's some seesawing going on right down to the concrete. I use as little aileron as possible, but still seem to correct right, correct left, correct right... never really stabilizing. Real-world... do pilots in small aircraft and in large typically both use AP (I haven't tried AP at all yet) to bring them to the threshold before the human takes over for touchdown? Or do they really develop a super steady hand and stay on the centerline manually? (If a computer can do it, a human ought to be able to do it, right?Thanks, MH

What you probably experienced on that flight when you were young, was the pilot sideslipping the aircraft, and unfortunately, sideslipping is something which a lot of aircraft in FS do not emulate well, so you have to overcook it a lot to get it to happen. It's worth noting at this point that a sideslip is not normally intended to correct misalignment with the runway - although you can sort of use it for that purpose if you are very skilled - but rather it is to make the aircraft rapidly lose some lift so that you drop down lower if you are looking like you are going to land long or overshoot the touchdown markers on the runway. It can also assist you in fighting a crosswind too though, so it's worth picking the direction in which you choose to yawIf you simply kick on rudder (either in FS, or in a real aircraft), what happens is that the aircraft yaws in the direction you command, but because that is not the direction you are initially traveling, pointing off to one side briefly does not overcome the inertia your aircraft has from its original direction of travel, so when you centralise the rudder, you'll pretty much be heading the same way you were, apart from maybe a slight deviation caused by the prop thrusting you sideways for a second or so.To execute a sideslip, you have to 'cross the controls', i.e. put the rudder over one way, and the ailerons over the other way. If you do it correctly, you should yaw sideways and pitch down slightly, losing a fair bit of height in the process.If you hold out your right hand flat in front of you, yaw it to the left and then roll it to the right a little and move it away from you, that's what your aircraft should be doing (you can go the opposite way too of course). But...It is important to note that it can be dangerous to do it at too low a speed, because effectively what you are doing, is using the fuselage to block the airflow to one of the wings to reduce the lift on that wing (that loss of lift would be about where your thumb is on the above example with your hand), as well as altering the direction of the airflow over the wings in general to make them less efficient, and cause a bit more drag too, from flying sideways.All of that means that if you sideslip near the stall speed, you can stall the wing on the side where the airflow is blocked by the fuselage, because a large proportion of the wing will suddenly have no airflow over it. If enough of that wing gets the airflow blocked, and the airflow over the rest of that wing reduces speed because of the drag you induce when flying in a sideways motion, it can stall that wing, and that means you'll go into a spin (which is caused when one wing stalls and the other is still flying). That's the bit FS does not do well, but even so, it's a good to get into the habit of using caution with a sideslip in FS, since if you one day decide to do it in a real aircraft, you'll remember the points to look out for.On a real aircraft, you can usually judge how far you are pushing things in a sideslip by the protesting noise you get from the airflow, which sounds like the wind has suddenly picked up very strongly; what you are hearing is the noise of the air passing the fuselage in an unusual direction and getting turbulent, which of course also increases the drag and contributes to the loss of height that you are aiming for when doing a sideslip. You probably won't hear that in FS though.Have a crack at it and watch the replay from the tower view and you will certainly recognise what your aircraft is doing, because you'll have seen it a million times in movies, usually with a DC-3 if it is a really cliche movie.Hope that helps a bit. Al

Personally, what I do to line up and stay there (when doing it visually), is draw a massively extended centreline on the landscape with my eyes and go off that for positioning, I think the ability to do that for me from very oblique angles may be linked to good spacial awareness, since I'm a fairly good artist and have a good grip of perspective, but that's just a guess as to what might be behind why I can do it.Even so, the simple truth is, flying a real aeroplane is often a bit easier than the simulated variant; you could compare it to driving a car - lots of people are not particularly good a car racing sims, but can drive a car for real without even really thinking about it. The feedback is very different on a real car, you almost think your way around turns, whereas on a car driving sim, you have to really concentrate on how much your apply in a turn. The same is true with aeroplanes.Al

I use a "crab" on final where the nose is off to a side to compensate for the crosswind component and wings are level. You will know if you are on the center line visually by looking out the glareshield (windshield) and when on the far part of the runway will appear centered in the runway threshold. If you are crabbing the runway threshold will not appear in the center of your glareshield but offset to the side by your crab amount. The important thing as you descend is that the runway far end does not drift side to side related to the threshold and the threshold stays on the established reference point you noted when lined up.In a cross control forward slip you will need more power to counteract the increased altitude loss trend with pitch adjustments in concert to keep the aircraft at a safe airspeed due to the increased stall speed. As you start your flare or while floating in ground effect you bank into the crosswind applying opposite rudder to line up the nose in effect transitioning into a side slip as described. One wheel of the landing gear will touch before the other. As the aircraft slows you will need to increase opposite rudder as control decreases with airspeed. Although slipping increases the effective stall speed if you are in ground effect altitude (about 2/3 the wingspan above the runway) the stall speed is lowered a bit again. It is permissible in a crosswind landing in a tricycle (nosewheel) gear aircraft to push the nose down when lined up and straighten the rudder as contact is made, not wait for the nose to drop on its own (called holding the nose up with increasing pitch control). You will have a bit more on landing roll-out distance taken up. Keep the aileron as you would be banking into the wind increasing it as the aircraft slows with even all wheels down to counteract the crosswind trying to push the aircraft to the side.In small aircraft taxiing with significant wind forces around you turn the aileron into the crosswind. If you have a headwind component on a tricycle gear aircraft as you taxi you push the nose down to keep the nosewheel firmly on the ground. If you have a tail wind component the elevator effect is reversed so you pull the stick/yoke back to keep the nose on the ground because of the reversed relative airflow. Taxiing in r/w small aircraft with strong surface winds requires caution and some might consider it fun.Last but not least as was already noted some aircraft models in FS slip better than others because mostly of the effectiveness designed into the rudder.

Personally, what I do to line up and stay there (when doing it visually), is draw a massively extended centreline on the landscape with my eyes and go off that for positioning, I think the ability to do that for me from very oblique angles may be linked to good spacial awareness, since I'm a fairly good artist and have a good grip of perspective, but that's just a guess as to what might be behind why I can do it.Even so, the simple truth is, flying a real aeroplane is often a bit easier than the simulated variant; you could compare it to driving a car - lots of people are not particularly good a car racing sims, but can drive a car for real without even really thinking about it. The feedback is very different on a real car, you almost think your way around turns, whereas on a car driving sim, you have to really concentrate on how much your apply in a turn. The same is true with aeroplanes.Al

Chock- don't forget also, that FS- single view, generates a field of view of only 45

In small aircraft taxiing with significant wind forces around you turn the aileron into the crosswind. If you have a headwind component on a tricycle gear aircraft as you taxi you push the nose down to keep the nosewheel firmly on the ground. If you have a tail wind component the elevator effect is reversed so you pull the stick/yoke back to keep the nose on the ground because of the reversed relative airflow. Taxiing in r/w small aircraft with strong surface winds requires caution and some might consider it fun.

During taxi, neutral elevator is usually sufficient with a headwind.With respect to tailwinds, direct or quartering, you actually want to *lower* (push forward) NOT raise the elevator with a tailwind. My instructor taught me to 'dive away from the wind', meaning elevator lowered. If you think about it, a raised elevator actually gives the tailwind something to push against--the bottom surface of the elevator--creating a lifting force at the tail, exactly what you're trying to prevent. With the elevator deflected downwards, the opposite holds true; the air flow strikes the top surface of the elevator forcing the tail downwards. See this referenceFWIW

I think it varies whether the aircraft uses a stabilator versus an elevator. On an elevator with the flap up on its rear (nose down for a headwind) a tail wind would produce a lifting force on it. A stabilator (one control surface being the entire wing) if tilted so the rear is higher (nose up in a headwind) a tailwind would would produce lifting force on it. Do I have this reversed?Wouldn't you dive into a headwind which on the ground has a relative wind like in flight and then reverse it for a tailwind? Again, I referred to tricycle gear, not tail draggers where you want to keep the tailwheel in contact so the opposite would apply.(Your reference link did not work for me. Might be Firefox or my security.)

During taxi, neutral elevator is usually sufficient with a headwind.With respect to tailwinds, direct or quartering, you actually want to *lower* (push forward) NOT raise the elevator with a tailwind. My instructor taught me to 'dive away from the wind', meaning elevator lowered. If you think about it, a raised elevator actually gives the tailwind something to push against--the bottom surface of the elevator--creating a lifting force at the tail, exactly what you're trying to prevent. With the elevator deflected downwards, the opposite holds true; the air flow strikes the top surface of the elevator forcing the tail downwards. See this referenceFWIW

Alan - I want to make absolutely sure I have the correct take on this. Can we talk real-world first?Cessna: You're well above stall speed, on glideslope, no wind, and five miles or less from touchdown, and find that you're not on the centerline. What technique would you use to get on centerline and stay there?Now... simming in FS9 under all the same conditions, with either the Cessna - or - thinking to the future - with a 737, what technique would you use if you weren't using Autorudder?I can practice your recommendation in FS9 by flying straight and level and applying your technique. (I'm becoming suspicious that my stick isn't calibrating correctly.)MH

What you probably experienced on that flight when you were young, was the pilot sideslipping the aircraft, and unfortunately, sideslipping is something which a lot of aircraft in FS do not emulate well, so you have to overcook it a lot to get it to happen. It's worth noting at this point that a sideslip is not normally intended to correct misalignment with the runway - although you can sort of use it for that purpose if you are very skilled - but rather it is to make the aircraft rapidly lose some lift so that you drop down lower if you are looking like you are going to land long or overshoot the touchdown markers on the runway. It can also assist you in fighting a crosswind too though, so it's worth picking the direction in which you choose to yawIf you simply kick on rudder (either in FS, or in a real aircraft), what happens is that the aircraft yaws in the direction you command, but because that is not the direction you are initially traveling, pointing off to one side briefly does not overcome the inertia your aircraft has from its original direction of travel, so when you centralise the rudder, you'll pretty much be heading the same way you were, apart from maybe a slight deviation caused by the prop thrusting you sideways for a second or so.To execute a sideslip, you have to 'cross the controls', i.e. put the rudder over one way, and the ailerons over the other way. If you do it correctly, you should yaw sideways and pitch down slightly, losing a fair bit of height in the process.If you hold out your right hand flat in front of you, yaw it to the left and then roll it to the right a little and move it away from you, that's what your aircraft should be doing (you can go the opposite way too of course). But...It is important to note that it can be dangerous to do it at too low a speed, because effectively what you are doing, is using the fuselage to block the airflow to one of the wings to reduce the lift on that wing (that loss of lift would be about where your thumb is on the above example with your hand), as well as altering the direction of the airflow over the wings in general to make them less efficient, and cause a bit more drag too, from flying sideways.All of that means that if you sideslip near the stall speed, you can stall the wing on the side where the airflow is blocked by the fuselage, because a large proportion of the wing will suddenly have no airflow over it. If enough of that wing gets the airflow blocked, and the airflow over the rest of that wing reduces speed because of the drag you induce when flying in a sideways motion, it can stall that wing, and that means you'll go into a spin (which is caused when one wing stalls and the other is still flying). That's the bit FS does not do well, but even so, it's a good to get into the habit of using caution with a sideslip in FS, since if you one day decide to do it in a real aircraft, you'll remember the points to look out for.On a real aircraft, you can usually judge how far you are pushing things in a sideslip by the protesting noise you get from the airflow, which sounds like the wind has suddenly picked up very strongly; what you are hearing is the noise of the air passing the fuselage in an unusual direction and getting turbulent, which of course also increases the drag and contributes to the loss of height that you are aiming for when doing a sideslip. You probably won't hear that in FS though.Have a crack at it and watch the replay from the tower view and you will certainly recognise what your aircraft is doing, because you'll have seen it a million times in movies, usually with a DC-3 if it is a really cliche movie.Hope that helps a bit. Al

Hi, mudhen~I know that you addressed your question to Alan, but since I, like you, fly without separate rudder pedal hardware, I thought I'd share my fs9 experiences with you. In calm conditions, you should just be able to make small corrections with autorudder enabled. This corrections are something you actually would do in RL flight as well, even in negligible winds due to flight control rigging variances and such.There was an earlier post by someone who was also an artist, I believe. This person mentioned getting 'perspective' and I'm coming to believe that this may be more of the issue than your flight controls. The point here is to capture what the visual image looks like when you're lined up perfectly with the runway and on proper glide path. In instrument flight training there's a saying which goes, 'early detection, small correction' which applies to flying a precision instrument approach but which you can apply to your visual approach practice. If you see the visual image skewing to the left or right, immediately make a 'small' coordinated turn to correct. Once you again acquire the visual image, a small correction opposite your first one. Try and lead (make the correction before you actually need to) a bit with this second correction to avoid overshooting. Point being, the sooner you're able to tell correction is needed the smaller the correction will need to be.You might want to save a flight where you're on a five mile final so you can practice your approaches repeatedly. As a reference, maybe choose a runway with an ILS and use slew mode until you have the needles crossed (this will not take into account pitch attitude or heading, so just use a smidge of nose down and make sure you have your aircraft heading aligned with the runway). This will approximate what the visual image of the runway should look like at any point along your approach.Have fun!PS Ronzie, I don't want to hijack mudhen's post, so I'm not going to discuss the crosswind taxiing technique any further in this thread. Hope you can somehow access that url; it's good information and consistent with what I learned when I was working on my PPL

I played around with my pedal sensitivities and rudder effectiveness in the aircraft.cfg of some GA aircraft but I never could get a good forward slip in them for crosswind correction. This has been noted by others. On the other hand some combat sim models have been written up to have extremely effective rudders capable of getting into spins in FS.

PS Ronzie, I don't want to hijack mudhen's post, so I'm not going to discuss the crosswind taxiing technique any further in this thread. Hope you can somehow access that url; it's good information and consistent with what I learned when I was working on my PPL

"On an elevator with the flap up on its rear (nose down for a headwind) a tail wind would produce a lifting force on it." should have been entered as "(nose up for a headwind)". I had a CPL a long time ago and tried it parked into a headwind. The nose tended to lift as the yoke was pulled back.

Alan - I want to make absolutely sure I have the correct take on this. Can we talk real-world first?Cessna: You're well above stall speed, on glideslope, no wind, and five miles or less from touchdown, and find that you're not on the centerline. What technique would you use to get on centerline and stay there?Now... simming in FS9 under all the same conditions, with either the Cessna - or - thinking to the future - with a 737, what technique would you use if you weren't using Autorudder?I can practice your recommendation in FS9 by flying straight and level and applying your technique. (I'm becoming suspicious that my stick isn't calibrating correctly.)MH

Okay, I've done a little sketch that might help you, a bit exaggerated, but it should make sense:At five or eight miles or whatever, I see the runway is not in alignment, so using how it appears I mentally draw the dotted lines and get the point (marked as an X) that indicates where I should be overhead, to have the runway dead centre. I'm then no longer using the appearance of the runway so much as the point I've mentally plotted as being the sweet spot, so, it's a thirty degree turn to the right to aim for getting overhead of that spot. It has to be a fairly tight turn, as there is no time to mess about with the runway getting nearer, so a positive decision to sort things out as opposed to edging across is the way to go. As that point X approaches it will be under your aircraft, so it's eyes back to the runway out of the left three quarter view from the windscreen and observe when the runway is coming into line, because I'll have to anticipate turning back into line with the runway before it actually is, by making a thirty degree turn to the left, just a little before I'm at the sweet spot.With a bit of practice you can get very good at this, but pay particular attention to the turn rate of your aircraft, and that's where smooth flying and being aware of the turn rate indicator in your aircraft can help. You will find that you mostly do it by feel rather than specific measurements. Normally, on a real circuit, you tend to anticipate turning onto final and then either open out or tighten up your turn to get into line for landing, so this technique is really nothing more than an extension of that procedure; kind of 'mentally' doing what an ILS system does. Hope that makes sense.Incidentally, if you want to do some practice for this, then there is an interesting technique you can try which used to be more common among student pilots, but doesn't get seen a lot these days. You can do it in a garden, or a big room...Get a book and plonk it in the middle of the room - this is your runway - now, what you do is draw a line mentally from the touchdown point back up to where you turn onto final, then draw a line back from the there to the turn for the crosswind leg, and then another line from the crosswind turn point to the start of the downwind leg, and stand at that point. Then you walk the route and crouch down to get the sight picture of your 'book runway' at all points on the circuit, at all points on the 'circuit', you should be no lower than a 4:1 incline angle to the threshhold. This is how you can practice for emergency landings in fields too incidentally, since you effectively use the same technique by mentally drawing a runway onto your chosen emergency landing field, and then draw the circuit back from the touchdown point up to the start point of what will be your circuit. If you were wondering how glider pilots manage to get down in fields in the middle of nowhere when they run out of lift and have to land, then now you know what they do!Al

I didn't know planes could skid.

Just to be a little picky, and I don't believe anyone has mentioned this yet. A skid and a slip are different from one another. The way I learned it is, if you put rudder towards the ground=skid (bad when close to stall), rudder towards sky=slip (affective when on final)....correct me if I'm wrong.