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Old 19th June 2008 | 23:30
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john_tullamarine
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Joined: Apr 2001
: ATPL
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From: various places .....
I describe a skid

Not trying to be confrontational at all ...

Excluding short lived dynamic events, generally associated with perturbations in the airmass or aircraft oscillations not under the control of the pilot, an aircraft will see the air coming head on (considering lateral angles) .. unless the pilot does something to cause that direction to alter.

About all the pilot can do (let's exclude post departure flight) is to yaw the aircraft by using varying combinations of rudder/aileron .. the end result is that the airflow vector moves to one side or the other. Aerodynamically, this is slip, regardless of how it's done, from which side of the nose the airflow is coming, and regardless of bank as seen by a fixed observer.

Where a lot of confusion comes in is in respect of pilot speak .. we talk of skid (wind coming from the outside of a turn), slip (wind coming from the inside of a turn), side-slipping with crossed controls, forward slipping (I think that is the US term for the final approach type of side-slip) etc... etc ..

End of the day it's all much the same .. if the wind is off the nose as seen by the pilot, the aircraft is slipping .... stall in that circumstance and the probability of excitement increases.

I recall (very clearly) my first exposure to this .. as an ab initio pilot (Victa Airtourer) we were having a look at spirals and incipient spins as I recall .. end result was that Cec got me to wind up into a reasonably tight turn for an accelerated stall .. and then put in a bootful of rudder as we got into buffet ... an aerodynamics lesson which remains clearly imprinted in my now not so youthful brain ....
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