Thursday, May 26, 2016

Flying Lesson #51 - Slip, Slide And Landings

Today was a beautiful day. Sunny and not a cloud below 8,000 feet.

Winds from 240 at 10 gave a crosswind factor of 5 knots down runway 27R.

So I did the preflight on 73455 and after adding some oil all was good.

I met up with Ray and he decided that today was an excellent day to work on crosswind landings and no-flap slip to land. I had not done forward slips to landing before, I've done many side slips in cross-wind landings but this was to be a new experience.

So I handled the takeoff and he then demonstrated a forward slip, no flap landing.

Basically you're flying sideways towards the runway and dropping like a rock when you do a forward slip. It lets you quickly descend without gaining a ton of airspeed. You use your aileron in the direction of the wind and use lots of rudder to prevent any turn and to keep the nose of the plane opposite to the aileron side.

It was the most aggressive slip I've ever been in and it took awhile to get used to making that big of a slip and bank. Half the fun is holding the aileron in, easing the rudder to line up the nose with the runway as you land but also pulling back on the yoke all at the same time. You come in both higher and faster which makes for a fair bit of float down the runway until the plane is ready to stop flying.

I then gave them a try with Ray doing less and less each time and did it all by myself quite a number of times.

Ray also demonstrated a power off 180 and worked on sharpening up my pattern work and getting used to flying a tighter pattern.

15 no flap touch-n-go landings later I think I've got this forward slip maneuver reasonably well down. Ray thinks I'm doing well and wants to move me along, which is a good thing.

Let's hope the weather holds so I can get in my cross country long solo this weekend.

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