I love threads like this
A couple of comments caught my eye:
However, if it is very very strong, a light aircraft may not be able to make headway over the ground.
Jeez! I've never come across an 80kt headwind, which is what it'd take for your average GA aircraft to have a groundspeed of zero or less... or were you thinking of microlights? But this does reminds of DHC-4 Caribous (
see here if interested of 38SQN when I used to work at RAAF Richmond in NSW: when on final with full flap in a goodly headwind, they
seemed to have a GS of nearly zero! Don't know what the fully flapped stall speed on these was, but pretty low I think (guess 35 or 40kts?)...
tend to combine methods. I leave the yaw until shortly before wheels touch and also apply wing down. Sometimes I've also had to differentially close the throttles to increase the yaw rate.
Funnily enough, we were talking about this the other weekend when our trip to Germany involved a number of gusty x-wind landings... when discussing our respective techniques (wing-low versus crab in versus combination), I realised I am not always conscious of which method I am using... just kind of do it without thinking about it! Following this conversation though, now that I
am thinking about it, I seem to suffer paroxysms of indecision on every approach! I was better off just getting on with it!
Andy
