Good tutorial - I'd add that, as you are crabbing, adjust your view so you are looking AT the rwy, even though your plane is NOT! Sometimes out of the side window if it's bad enough..it really helps, rather than just keep your view centred on the prop and looking askew at the runway, look AT the runway, and then flip your view as you straighten up just before touchdown..try it..obviously, if you have TrackIR, you will already be looking at the runway..

 

I botched a moderately bad xwind landing on my fourth or fifth landing in my (still ongoing) PPL..It was pucker-inducing in real life, and I was looking nearly sideways for much of the approach (thinking that both I and the instructor were destined for a messy end) At about a hundred feet i had a brain-cloud. My head just emptied. I said "you have control" and he landed. I felt like a chump. It isn't as easy as it looks or sounds in a real, humming, very close to the hard ground, plane, no matter how good you are at doing them in your flight sim of choice - personally, I seek them out, as it's a bit of a thing for me now..Won't be beaten and all that..Alaska is ace for nasty xwind landings

 

I would also say that, in a "normal" flight in FSX, even with ASE or REX/E you wouldn't generally encounter winds like we are seeing with the changeable weather theme (c. 40-70kts), but then in RL AK is that windy..At least it is in FWA!

 

In AK in FSX with REXE I see a lot of 30-45kt winds, but haven't seen anything like the stuff in FLIGHT yet..I think the winds are there in FSX, but the planes (or most of them, certainly the stock ones) behave differently..I still have a lot of off centreline landings in FSX because of wind, and some of the better payware is very good in wind, but the Maule in FLIGHT just feels like it's being tossed around on a hairy xwind landing..I like it..

Crosswind landings are fun in real life, but you better know what you are doing. There are two schools of thought, some pilots like to approach in a crab like the airliners and basically you really are not flying sideways, you are just flying into the wind so that your ground track is in line with the runway. About the time that you start to flare, you kick the nose over with your rudder to align it with the runway and use the ailerons to keep the aircraft on the runway centerline.( wheel for the wind, rudder for the runway) This usually results in the upward wing lowering to stop left right drift. I love to land that way, and used to practice one wheel touch and goes in a 152 and 172.

 

Others like to slip it in, or cross control the aircraft, which I never cared for, but some folks love. In that method you lower the upwind wing, and use opposite rudder to keep your ground track aligned with the runway centerline on short final. To me the crab approach is easier. In flaring, if you are crabbing and you can't get the nose to align with the runway when you are close to touching down, then it is full power time and you try it again.

my airspeed read around 53 knots even though I was easily doing 65 at that moment

 

I try to maintain 70 knots indicated on final in the Maule. If I'm going a bit faster than indicated, especially with a crosswind, that's perfectly fine with me. By the time I'm in the flare, I'm too busy to watch the airspeed.

 

I dont know what it's like in real life, but in the FSX Goose, I added a digital angle of attack readout to the airspeed indicator and found that if I maintained a 3.0 degree angle of attack during approach, I was going the right speed no matter what the aircraft weight was. It kept me right on the glide slope with the aircraft level. I'd maintain that AoA all the way to the flare, then increase it to 6.5 degrees during flare and do a perfect 3 point landing every time. The AoA was measured on the body, not the wing, and 6.5 degrees was how far the nose pointed up when on the ground.

 

Hook

try to maintain 70 knots indicated on final in the Maule

 

Sorry I didn't make it clear, that was in a 172 last weekend. :)

Sorry I didn't make it clear, that was in a 172 last weekend. :)

 

I knew that. I just can't fly a 172 in Flight, and don't get up much in real planes. :D

 

Hook

At low speed in a cross wind situation, your aircraft will want to "wind sock" since the tail is getting hit in the side by the wind. Thats what the tail is for, to keep the nose of the aircraft poined into the wind, like the feathers in end of an arrow or a dart.

This is true only on the ground. When a plane is flying (and not slipping or skidding) the relative wind (save for gusts) is always from straight ahead. That's why a yaw string works: if a glider with a yaw string were "getting hit from the side" by wind, the string wouldn't be straight up the centerline of the windscreen.An airplane flying in a steady wind is flying in a mass of moving air, and the whole plane is carried along in that mass. The tail is not "getting hit in the side by the wind."