This is not an uncommon feature, at least I've read of it in several AOPA Pilot plane reviews on turboprops (I think).

Impossible! At speeds above 30kts, it is not allowed to use the nose steering wheel to control the direction of the aircraft. Unless his 737 can run out of the runway with no damage, it is a vital obligation for him to use rudder.

No. A commercial plane has a tiller and a rudder. Rudder turns the rudder and the tiller turns the wheel. Tiller is used for ground operations.Taylor Oldham

To be fair, there's no P-factor in a 737, so the 172 isn't entirely the same beast, although on landing, it shouldn't matter. But, you're right, you should know how it works at 90k before you do it at 160k.

The torque and p-factor on the flight simulator 172 is so unrealistic compared to the real thing that you should just turn it off.

Taylor trust me on this, it's type specific but above a certain speed you stop using the tiller for directional control on the ground. Above 30 - 40 knots would be a good generalization. And you can move the nose wheel with the rudder, thats why you need to hold the tiller firm when you perfom the rudder check during taxi.RegardsRob

The torque and p-factor on the flight simulator 172 is so unrealistic compared to the real thing that you should just turn it off.

Or get the Carenado :(

Alexander,I thought I'd give you my perspective on rudder usage. These principles should apply to whatever aircraft you fly - beit a Cessna 172 or an A380.Almost all the time you fly (with the exception of a crosswind landing and side/forward slips) you are aiming to be in coordinated flight. Simply put, this means that the forces you feel as a pilot during turns always go straight down through the seat of your pants, so if you were in a left hand turn, and banked to the left, you would not feel like you are falling into the turn (or out of the turn) - the resulting forces are going in a vertical direction in relation to the aircraft. In order to achieve this coordinated turn you must use the rudder of the aircraft, so in a left turn you would be using some left rudder (unless it is a really steep turn). In shallow turns some aircraft will not require the pilot to physically make any rudder input, but nonetheless there is still some process occurring (be it a yaw damper/control rigging/aerodynamic configuration) that achieves the same effect.Most aircraft (and certainly those flying under IFR) will have a turn coordinator (or turn and slip indicator) that allows you to confirm whether your turns are indeed coordinated. The MD11, for example, shows this on the PFD (check out the manual). Pilots are taught to 'step on the ball', so in the MD11, if the bottom part of the turn coordinator is displaced to the right, you would step on the right rudder pedal until it is central again underneath the triangle.In your original post you mentioned wind, and applying rudder to counteract the wind. Ignoring takeoffs and landings, you would never be using the rudder to combat the wind. You would simply be flying the aircraft in a straight line, on a particular heading, and the wind ends up giving you some drift to the left or right, resulting in a ground track different to your heading (where the nose is pointing). It's exactly the same as swimming across a fast moving river - if you have a current coming from your right, then you end up reaching the far bank further to the left than the point you were originally pointed at. You'd soon realise that in order to actually reach the point on the bank where you want to climb out of the river, you'd actually have to aim for a point further to the right.Pilots simply compensate for the wind by calculating what heading they need to fly on in order to achieve the ground track they desire to reach their next waypoint, so with a crosswind from the right (which would cause a drift to the left) you would be flying on a heading that is greater than your desired ground track. As an example, let's say you were flying along at 250 knots (true airspeed). You want to achieve a ground track of 360 degrees in order to reach your next waypoint. The wind is coming from 045 degrees (the northeast) and is blowing at 30 knots. If you think about this, the wind is coming from 45 degrees to your right, so is going to blow you to the left and also slow down your groundspeed. To compensate for this, you'll have to fly on a heading greater than 360 degrees in order that you compensate for this drift. If you plugged the numbers into a flight computer, you'd discover that you actually have to fly on a heading of 005 degrees in order to achieve a track across the ground of 360 degrees. Your groundspeed would be less than your true airspeed, in this case 228 knots.I hope this makes sense!James

...and I'd add that you could, in my example above, fly along with a heading of 360 degrees and a ground track of 360 degrees if you really wanted to. You'd be banked slightly into the wind (to the right in this case) and would be applying left rudder to compensate for the turning effect of your right bank. However, it would feel pretty uncomfortable for you and your passengers as they would feel like they are falling out of their seats, and you would have more drag on the aircraft, and so would require more power and more fuel to compensate - clearly not desirable!This however is one of the techniques used in crosswind landings - making sure that both your nose is lined up down the runway centerline and your ground track also goes down the runway centerline.James

Turbo props - all the time - co-ordinated turns and cross-wind landings

Not quite. All turboprops I have flown in (KA350, KA200, PC12, Meridian) have a yaw damper, and you're better off keeping your feet on the floor when it is on because it's not going to let you do much.

Thanks!!!Ciao,Alexander

Not quite. All turboprops I have flown in (KA350, KA200, PC12, Meridian) have a yaw damper, and you're better off keeping your feet on the floor when it is on because it's not going to let you do much.

Ok, so if I'm flying the PMDG 747 and MSFS's crappy ATC has tried to slam dunk me at the outer marker, I can't do a forward slip to try drop down? (I've tried them and haven't been real happy with the results) Or, more generally, should one turn off the yaw damper for this move? Should one ever turn off the yaw damper? Not much discussion of this in the PMDG manuals.

No. A commercial plane has a tiller and a rudder. Rudder turns the rudder and the tiller turns the wheel. Tiller is used for ground operations.

The tiller is used for narrow turns, at least on the 737. During normal taxi and takeoff roll they use the rudder because it's tied to the nosewheel as well.

What a lot of passion over the rudder! Perhaps my instructor only ever had one engine out landing and one non-ILS high crosswind landing to contend with, after all, he wasn't that old. In the real world, if you are in a heavy then Yaw dampers etc. will do a better job then you can and if you are in a light GA, then you are going to get bounced around so much that un co-ordinated turns just aren't that uncomfortable. I am not suggesting that anyone should change the way they use their rudder, only that they don't get quite so upset if other peoples usage is different from their own.

Certainly in my mind one of the key reasons for keeping turns coordinated is the lower risk.If you stall the aircraft, and the aircraft is not coordinated, the risk of a spin is much higher. When you are in the traffic pattern, making turns before landing, you are going slowly (probably fairly close to the stall speed - 130% of it perhaps) and so do not have too much margin to play with before the aircraft does stall. If you start banking hard in order to correct an overshoot, for example, you're in even more trouble - the stall speed of the aircraft increases with the load factor (Gs you are pulling), and so your margin shrinks even more. You are also low and so have less altitude to recover should you stall the aircraft. A low altitude spin, which would be more likely to occur if your turns are uncoordinated, would I think be pretty undesirable and certainly a reason to hope for that ballistic parachute system!Anyway, that's my boring thoughts on the subject and why uncoordinated turns scare me!James

Ok, so if I'm flying the PMDG 747 and MSFS's crappy ATC has tried to slam dunk me at the outer marker, I can't do a forward slip to try drop down? (I've tried them and haven't been real happy with the results) Or, more generally, should one turn off the yaw damper for this move? Should one ever turn off the yaw damper? Not much discussion of this in the PMDG manuals.

Real world, you'd wouldn't do a slip to lose altitude. My technique when I'm hosed: T/Ls to idle & drop the gear add flaps and keep the nose high until you get to Ref+5 to Ref+15 and let the thing fall out of the sky until you get back on slope. It isn't only the sim that gives slam dunk approaches.Boeings have Series Yaw Dampers, so you don't need to kick the Y/D off for landing (or to go un-coordinated) like you do on most turboprops (which have Parallel Y/Ds).

Matt: series verses parallel yaw dampeners??