I'm a real world student pilot, so I can shed a little more light on this from a 'feel' perspective.Both slips feel very awkward. The plane is out of balance and so you feel like you are in a strong slip or skid. Your butt is literally pushed in the seat weird and it makes passengers uncomfortable.As the poster mentioned, many pilots, especially commercial ones, do a combination of the technique. You crab most of the way in so that the passengers don't feel any discomfort, only aligning with the runway in a sideslip as late as possible.You generally need to sideslip to prevent side loads on the landing gear. And you can't crab to land because you need the aircraft aligned with the runway for when you start using the wheels instead of the wings.>>A forward slip is used to descend at a higher rate while>keeping a relatively low airspeed. To do this you kick in>full rudder, lower the nose and apply opposite aileron to keep>tracking (sideways) in your desired direction. Airplanes>without flaps use this very commonly for final approach...>>A side slip involves using only enough rudder/opposite aileron>to counter the crosswind component of the wind, allowing you>to track and touch down with the aircraft aligned properly>straight down the runway and avoid landing gear stress. This>is a maneuver that is done "all the time" at various degrees>in pretty much any landing scenario. Some pilots are>trained/prefer to enter an appropriate sideslip while on>final, while others keep a "crab" angle going until the last>minute and enter a very short sideslip just before touchdown. >Both ways work. I prefer the crab & kick method myself.>>

"does anyone know if rob's planning to update the 172 airfile? in fsx it still flies straight and level pretty much on the numbers, but it falls backwards on its tail when i try to stall or spin it :-("We might eventually get round to this when the backlog of hundreds (well, tens) of aircraft already in the queue are updated. The fact is, FSX has slightly scuppered all the hard work done in some of my airfiles for FS9, and not just those for RealAir. I don't bear a grudge though...it's just one of those things!FSX has ironed out a few issues with default aircraft but also made more challenging maneouvres a bit more difficult. I'm just about there working out what on earth they've done and will be (slowly) updating some of the aircraft I've been involved with over the last four years.(Rolls up sleeves and pours large cup of coffee).Rob Young

>You generally need to sideslip to prevent side loads on the>landing gear.And to prevent ending up in grass in a tailwheel aircraft :) Another area that unfortunately lacks in FS. The RealAir Decathlon got closer, but I won't be convinced until they can simulate pissing your pants after landing a taildragger with some side load...

rob,thanks a lot for taking time to reply. i'll wait as long as it takes. i wish i could say i'll wait patiently... :-)i logged a decent three-digit number of hours in your fs9 172. no other crate in my stable ever reached two digits. i fly a 172 in real life and your flight model just felt sooooo right (including the butterflies in my stomach when i would kick in that rudder in a stall :-))thanks for the hard work and congrats, in advance, on the results!

>A forward slip is used to descend at a higher rate while>keeping a relatively low airspeed. To do this you kick in>full rudder, lower the nose and apply opposite aileron to keep>tracking (sideways) in your desired direction. Airplanes>without flaps use this very commonly for final approach...Hi all,After reading all post I reach the conclusion that FSX still has several deficits when simulating the reality. My instructor always said me that doing side slips with full flaps is very dangerous because it makes stall the tail. This is very badly simulated, isn't it?Jose

>>>A forward slip is used to descend at a higher rate while>>keeping a relatively low airspeed. To do this you kick in>>full rudder, lower the nose and apply opposite aileron to>keep>>tracking (sideways) in your desired direction. Airplanes>>without flaps use this very commonly for final approach...>>Hi all,>>After reading all post I reach the conclusion that FSX still>has several deficits when simulating the reality. My>instructor always said me that doing side slips with full>flaps is very dangerous because it makes stall the tail. This>is very badly simulated, isn't it?>>JoseDepends on the aircraft, the speed, the wind direction and velocity, and the skills of the pilot!Having said that, tail-blanking does not seem to be simulated in FSX, which is folly, but indicative that what is going in on in FS flight modelling is by degrees, dumbing down the sophisticated application of the .air file, and increasing the functionality of the dumb aircraft.cfg file. The result is, as Rob Young has noted, increasing difficulty modelling the extremes of the flight envelope, a compromise for making it easier for the average user to completely stuff-up the flight models by thinking that you only need to mess with the numbers in the .cfg file.Allcott

Rob, I'm another fan of your skyhawk flight model. I look forward to your fsx version.Best,Bob