An Interesting Day To Fly

[Geico266]

I got to the airport early and the wind was blowing 270 @18 MPH ( ships do knots, not airplanes ) and rising. This is a direct cross wind for our airport and a perfect time to keep current on cross wind landings in my RV-12. ELSA.

I took off on 17 knowing I would be crabbing immediatly as I lifted off. Boy did I!

The winds aloft were 60 MPH according to my Dynon and for the first time in a long time I was a tad nervous about landing. This cross wind was 3 MPH over the POH, but that would come latter. I was in the air so it was time to play.

I pointed the nose into the wind and slowed down and deployed flaps. Stall is 42mph so by the time I slowed down I was going backward by 15 MPH!

I have done this before, but never with this amount of wind. The Dynon was showing a heading of 270 and airspeed of 45 and he Garmin 496 was showing a heading of 090 and 15 MPH! Too funny!

I retracted flaps and lowered the nose to pick up speed, but the site picture was like nothing I have seen before. It was like falling off a cliff backwards as I was still traveling backwards. Hard to explain, but really a strange sensation.

Time to land and the wind was a 20 MPH direct, now 5 MPH over Max. On final I had to really fight to keep it on the the windward side of the runway. Full rudder and using the ailerons to dip the right wing to control drift and keep her straight. The plan was get past the buildings and mechanical turbulance to see if I still had enough rudder authority. I did so I continued my decent until the right wheel touched and controlled by drift across the runway and i held it their to bleed off airspeed until the left side settled down.

Then the real battle began.

The plane wanted to weather vain hard, but the rudder and aileron controls still had exceptional control and the brakes worked great until I slowed to taxi speed. With winds like that and a light aircraft you need to be aware of wind any time the plane is moving and adjust the controls as needed.

A 20 MPH direct cross wind landing in an RV-12. That is a personal best for me in an LSA, and the model.

 

[kyleb]

I got to the airport early and the wind was blowing 270 @18 MPH ( ships do knots, not airplanes ) and rising. This is a direct cross wind for our airport and a perfect time to keep current on cross wind landings in my RV-12. ELSA.

I took off on 17 knowing I would be crabbing immediatly as I lifted off. Boy did I!

The winds aloft were 60 MPH according to my Dynon and for the first time in a long time I was a tad nervous about landing. This cross wind was 3 MPH over the POH, but that would come latter. I was in the air so it was time to play.

I pointed the nose into the wind and slowed down and deployed flaps. Stall is 42mph so by the time I slowed down I was going backward by 15 MPH!

I have done this before, but never with this amount of wind. The Dynon was showing a heading of 270 and airspeed of 45 and he Garmin 496 was showing a heading of 090 and 15 MPH! Too funny!

I retracted flaps and lowered the nose to pick up speed, but the site picture was like nothing I have seen before. It was like falling off a cliff backwards as I was still traveling backwards. Hard to explain, but really a strange sensation.

Time to land and the wind was a 20 MPH direct, now 5 MPH over Max. On final I had to really fight to keep it on the the windward side of the runway. Full rudder and using the ailerons to dip the right wing to control drift and keep her straight. The plan was get past the buildings and mechanical turbulance to see if I still had enough rudder authority. I did so I continued my decent until the right wheel touched and controlled by drift across the runway and i held it their to bleed off airspeed until the left side settled down.

Then the real battle began.

The plane wanted to weather vain hard, but the rudder and aileron controls still had exceptional control and the brakes worked great until I slowed to taxi speed. With winds like that and a light aircraft you need to be aware of wind any time the plane is moving and adjust the controls as needed.

A 20 MPH direct cross wind landing in an RV-12. That is a personal best for me in an LSA, and the model.

And, a little farther East, I saw someone almost roll a Carbon Cub up in a ball in a <10 knot ~70 degree crosswind. Everything was great until the flare, when he took out all of the aileron he was using to hold the upwind wing down.

When it got really ugly, he just poured the coal to it, went around and made another bad (but slightly better) landing, still leaving out the aileron once he flared...