Originally Posted by
Prop swinger
dash6, Smokey,
You don't need to transition to wing down to stop any sideways drift. If you hold the crab throughout the round out & hold off the aircraft will continue to track down the runway. As the nose rises to the landing attitude you feed in rudder to align the fuselage with the runway.
Applying rudder will not change the direction of travel of the aircraft, certainly not in the couple of seconds it takes for the aircraft to run out of energy & touch down. Crosswind or not, the aircraft will continue to track down the runway after you put in the rudder. The only thing you need to do with the ailerons is keep the wings level.
I think you are confusing track with heading. If you align the aircraft so that you are flying the runway heading, a crosswind will indeed drift the aircraft sideways while it is still airborne.
The amount of drift will be proportional to the strength of the x-wind component, the inertia of the aircraft and the length of time that the x-wind has to act on the aircraft.
In certain circumstances this may well be negligible, as you suggest, but with a light aircraft in a strong x-wind it is most assuredly not trivial!
FBW