Feeling aircraft sensations

I had very little physical sensation [of] airspeed...

Right. One cannot feel speed. It's a consequence of the rule that says
"wherever you are, you are right there". =You= are never moving, it is
the rest of the world that moves around while you stay still. (This
isn't strictly true and will probably spawn a subthread for the pedants,
but the first step to understanding is to get your mind around this
concept, which does apply at constant speeds absent general relativity).
As the air goes rushing past there is noise, and if the rushing air
isn't totally steady (for example, due to swirling air currents) then
you will feel the forces of being bumped around, but those feelings are
not feelings of speed itself. The controls feel different at different
airspeeds, but not because the airplane is travelling, but rather,
because there is so much air rushing by the control surfaces. It's the
air that's moving. You are standing still, bucking the fierce wind with
the force of the engines, watching the earth go by beneath you. And the
earth is not even important (except to hold the air down)... if you were
chained to the runway pointing into a (strong enough) hurricaine wind,
you'd feel the same tight control forces as you would flying at high speed.

Also, nearly throughout the 4-hour flight, the
heading was different from the direction of travel, but I didn't feel
that wind correction angle.

Right. A "wind correction angle" is a sort of a fiction. The airplane
(in a steady state) is always pointed directly into the wind. That is,
pointed directly into the wind that it feels. Remember, the airplane is
standing still - the only thing the airplane feels is the wind. It
can't feel the earth three miles below. That would be silly (or require
very long landing gear!) Don't think of the wind relative to the earth
- remember, the earth is irrelevant once the wheels leave the ground.
You're =flying=! If you opened the sunroof(*) of your airplane and
stuck your hand up into the slipstream, the wind would always be
directly from the front (in coordinated flight, more later). The
problem is that the earth keeps trying to slip out from under us one way
or another. So, we as pilots have to be a bit tricky. If we point the
nose at Peoria, we'd find that by the time we got there, the earth will
have slipped Peoria out from in front of us, and replaced it by Des
Plains, which is not where we wanted to go. Just like shooting rabbit
(aim in front of him - aim where he's =going= to be), we have to aim the
airplane at where Peoria is =going= to be... and since Peoria is moving,
we need to lead the target. For people on the ground it looks like
we're flying sideways to some extent, but we're not. Some people would
say "the wind is carrying us away"... but it's not. Remember, the wind
is always from in front of the airplane. What is =really= happeneing is
that the earth is slipping out from under the atmosphere, taking all the
people with it. They are being pulled out from under the airplane's
path, and (mis)-perceive it as wind drift.

You are flying through the =air=, not over the =ground=. Only the air
matters. IF there's a massive earthquake while you're aloft, you won't
feel it at all.

I'm not sure whether or not the landing was
a x-wind, which tells you that that went imperceived too.

Well, it gets a little tricky when we need to connect with the ground
too. Remember, the ground is trying to slip away from us, probaby
sideways. That's why it lookes cockeyed when we land in what some
people call a crosswind, but is really just the earth trying to escape
the airplane's wheels by slipping off sideways. So, we have to cheat -
we try to get the airplane to move sideways =through the air= just for a
little bit, so we can catch up with the earth. One technique is to use
uncoordinated flight. If the air were turbulent, you might accuse the
pilot of being uncoordinated, but that's not what I mean. We use the
rudder to point the nose in one direction (say, to the left) while we
use the alerons (wing-tilters) to bank in the opposite direction. As a
result, we are flying crooked through the air - the wind is no longer
directly in front of us, but coming at us from slightly (or not so
slightly) to the right, just enough to catch up with the runway as it's
trying to escape us. Once all three wheels are firmly planted on the
runway, we are no longer flying, and are controlling our direction by
pushing against the ground instead. The air has become irrelevant
(except that it might try to tip us over because it's jealous, but we're
ready for that). We can now return to our illusion that the ground is
solid and the wind rushes over it.

But having experienced flight, we now know better.

Jose
(*) if you airplane doesn't have a sunroof, a bazooka can make one
pretty easily!
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