Crosswind landing control..

On Sun, 3 Dec 2006 22:33:20 -0500, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:

Hi Dudley,

Couple of points:

Applying forward pressure during the rollout is a bad idea. It can cause a
slew (no pun intended :-) of problems. Just concentrate on maintaining
directional control with rudder and let the nosewheel settle in naturally
at touchdown .

The whole Beech family is very good at imitating wheel barrows. :-))
If they aint ready to land they'll end up running down the runway on
the nose gear. The same thing is true of taking off. If it's ready to
fly you can't hold it on without imitating a wheelbarrow unless
everything including trim is neutral. They can be a real bear tying to
do touch and goes.

If needed, you should be holding some aileron in for wind correction during
this process. Retracting the flaps and holding in some back pressure will
help firm your mains.

With his mechanical flaps that works very well. With my electric flaps
it doesn't. I end up reducing drag and increasing lift which will
actually increase my roll out a bit. (I can be stopped by the time
they are full up)

I'm a great believer of not using forward pressure during touchdown and
rollout on landings in trikes. Shouldn't be necessary and it's dangerous.
Hold back pressure on the rollout. That will increase the pressure on the
mains and desensitize the nose wheel. On most trikes its important that the

Nose wheels are expensive and for steering during taxi. Mains are
strong for landing.

nose wheel be straight at touchdown. Correct for drift with aileron and
maintain directional control with opposite rudder. The magnitude of the
pressure required to do this properly will also vary during the approach.
Just keep the speed a bit higher than normal for the crosswind and fly the
airplane. If you do everything right, the nose wheel will take care of
itself and be positioned correctly at touchdown.
Think of it this way; if your rudder work is good, and your alignment is set
up and executed correctly, and your aileron work is good and compensating
correctly for the drift, the nosewheel should be just fine. :-)
Dudley Henriques
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com