Crosswind take-offs and landings.

[Bacchus]

Now that everybody has given their opinions on take-off procedures, how about some off the "ou manne" to give us rookies some tips on crosswind takeoffs and landings. Should you fly in, glide in, where do we hold the bar, what do we look out for, what strenght crosswind DONT you land in etc?
There seem to be a lot of diffrent opinions on this topic too.

[ICEMAN]

ive found that a powered in, plenty airspeed approach almost down to ground zero works well.......

In addition ive heard a few coments along the lines of "I (capital letters, with emphasis), dont abort landings or do missed aproaches" attitude ;

I preffer the attitude that: "its perfectly acceptable to abort your landings and go around as many times as it takes, to keep your butt out of a body bag" which seems to keep me out of @#$% ....... go around as many times until you are comfortable that this is "THE one"..

Usually with severe crosswinds/ turbulance, my first few approaches are from about 100ft, 50ft and then about 20ft to get a feel for the wind...


When a fixed wing A/C hits the bumps and turbulance of cross winds, the plane gets a jolt or two, but the C of G and C of L essentially remain the same (not to metion the stabilizing rudder) ..... when a trike gets a bump, turbulance, thermals or crosswinds, the swinging garden furniture that we sit in, keeps swinging like a pendulum ie C of G and C of L keep moving around....... so it becomes a constant "challenge" to get them back in sync to prevent VBJ ( Very Bad Ju-Ju....)

[justin.schoeman]

Am only a trainee myself, but have discovered that it is best to keep quite a bit of airspeed in crosswinds. What you don't realise is that is crosswind is generally blowing across your hangars, etc. before crossing the runway, so there can be some nasties (shadows and vorticies) hiding in it. The greater your airspeed relative to the rotating component of the wind, the more stable your a/c!

-justin

[Robin Hood]

Thanks Demon That is good, plain advice that makes sense Just hope I reme,ber it next time I am sh#%%^&g myself doing that crosswind landing!

[Smiley]

Yip I agree with all you guys, once again speed is money in the bank! :D I also make sure my airspeed is about 5mph faster in a crosswind landing or when I'm landing with a heavy pax.

On the wing side, make sure your wing is "balanced" in the wind on take-off(equal wind pressure on top and underneath wing) to avoid a force on wing after take-off that will turn the trike left or right. I had a trike with an 18 wing, and this was critical on take-off otherwise if you weren't strong enought you wouldn't have been able to correct that mistake. The smaller 15 or so wing is much more forgiving.

[Bacchus]

Thought speed will be the thing in the end!
Thanks all you good people!

[RudiGreyling]

Thought speed will be the thing in the end!
Thanks all you good people!

Ditto on most the above posts, but one thing I can add, keep the RPM up as much as possible during the descent with higher speed in turbulance and x-winds.

When you do get that ugly bump/drift close to the ground just before touch down, pushing full power and getting enough thrust in a split second to fly away or through it is much quicker from a higher RPM, than trying to get that prop reving up from idle. That extra split second is all that is required to safe your bacon and or trike in some nasty bumps close to the ground.

Regards
Rudi

[Mc Guyver]

Thought speed will be the thing in the end!
Thanks all you good people!

Ditto on most the above posts, but one thing I can add, keep the RPM up as much as possible during the descent with higher speed in turbulance and x-winds.

When you do get that ugly bump/drift close to the ground just before touch down, pushing full power and getting enough thrust in a split second to fly away or through it is much quicker from a higher RPM, than trying to get that prop reving up from idle. That extra split second is all that is required to safe your bacon and or trike in some nasty bumps close to the ground.


At our "advanced" airfield, we have trees all around the runway and one way in and one way out. We also only have crosswinds
Through experience the only way to handle this at our field in heavy winds is to come in high, finals at about 800ft agl and have a steep descent with airspeed at a minimum of 10%above cruise speed.
In extreme cases I have come in at 20% above cruise speed i.e 60nmh which is just before my trusty Aquilla starts oscillating.
Soon after arriving at this airfield and not being familiar with conditions, I took off in a real ugly westerly crosswind and wanted to do a left hand turn out. Well the wind said to me sorry but you are turning out to the right I had no control.
This all came about because our windsocks are protected by all the trees along the runway and also not knowing the conditions at our airfield
We also at times have severe wind shear on very short finals so you need to be ready to give full power to pull you into a safe landing