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Old 6th December 2005 | 07:00
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Genghis the Engineer
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This, if I may say, is diverging into a different topic.

There are three ways of flying a crosswind landing in a light aeroplane:-

(1) Wing-down

(2) Initially crabbed, transitioning with rudder into wing-down in the roundout.

(3) Land crabbed (generally reserved for aeroplanes with 2-axis controls, such as for example a flying flea derivative).


(1) and (2) involve at the end what is essentially a steady heading sideslip in landing configuration. Many GA aeroplanes are happy to accept either. But not all - for example a wing-down in a G109b will almost certainly result in a wingtip striking the runway, whilst the roll due to sideslip response is slow enough that when straightening for landing, it's possible to land it BEFORE the bank angle comes on enough to become a problem.

Conversely I know one aeroplane (the X'air - a microlight, but otherwise entirely conventional) which wouldn't be amenable to Percy's preferred technique, the reason being that the lateral stability is TOO HIGH, resulting in the pilot and passenger being effectively squashed into one side of the cockpit and pushing up pilot workload too much.

Incidentally, although crabbed is the RAF's preferred method, it's not universal - the RAF's L1011 pilots for example fly wing-down.

G
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