Crosswind Landings in Nose Wheel Aircraft

Lets start out on final approach to land in a 15 knot crosswind.

To maintain our track we initially crab. At this stage our balance ball is centered.

At some stage we need to transition into what I will call "Crosswind Management".

Crosswind Management

During 'crosswind management' the aim if to disconnect the balanced use of rudder and aileron. Rudder (your feet) does one job and the stick (aileron) has a separate function.

Rudder : to point or align the aircraft with our direction of travel.

Aileron : Controls your ground track left and right of the centerline. The aileron must be deflected in the opposite direction just enough so as to keep the aircraft above the runway centerline.

You are now in a slip.

You will be hopefully holding the aircraft in ground effect until it is ready to land - that is, until the stalling angle is reached so that when a main wheel touches the nose wheel will be well off the ground.

The into wind wheel should touch first. When this happens you need to use more "into-wind aileron (stick) to keep the aircraft on the into wind wheel.

By the time you have slowed enough that both main wheels are on the ground you should have full into wind aileron.

Into wind aileron has two purposes:

1. Aileron drag helps balance out any weather cocking forces and
2. The into wind wing is correctly being prevented from being picked up by the side wind or a gust of wind. If the wing starts to be picked up it is much more difficult to put it down again, as the surface area underneath the wing exposed to the wind increases.

Now you can gently put the nose wheel on the ground with no chance of wheel barrowing.

So when do we do this 'crosswind management'?

If you do it all the way down final (wing low approach) it gives you plenty of practice at using the controls independently but there are a few negatives. Firstly you are in a slip so will have a steeper approach from the increase in drag . Secondly if any approach towards the stall occurs you will stall one wing due to aileron deflection. I prefer to do it just prior to rounding out.

The take off is the reverse of the above.

Next I will deal with the same issue for a tail-wheel aircraft.