First solo cross-country flight completed - question

TheSmokingGnu wrote in
news:nO4Bj.7418$wM2.2549@trnddc07:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Call it 17.4 to be safe.

Well, now you're assuming runway 29 was actually 290, when it could be
anything from 290 to 294 and still be labeled "29".

Throws your sig figs out a bit.

Yeah, that's right, not to mention the vagaries of wind. That's why it's
wise to consider it to be the full whack when you have 60 degrees or
more. In reality, though, I only use the wind as a planning piece of
info. That is, I mostly just use it as a decision maker as to whether I
will do the approach at all. Once I'm actually doing it, the picture as
it develops will tell me if it's a good idea to continue and this info
loop continues right to the runway. If at any time the airplane starts
telling me that it doesn't like it, I divert. Having said that, I've
been in the situation several times where I had to land where I was in
spite of realising that I was realy beyond the airplanes safe capability
as well as my own. I got down each of these times, but a large degree of
luck was involved in each case. Being a control freak I would rather
have been somewhere else.
Probably the hairiest was in a twin beech in Indiana. The crosswind
component was 44 knots iirc.The actual wind was blowing over 50. This is
somewhat beyond the 18's advertised 20 knot demonstrated limit.
The Beech 18 had some peculiar nuances, one of which was the loss of
rudder due to the roiled air off the wing washing it out as you
approached three point position. So even if you did a satisfactory
touchdown in a crosswind, it tended to turn into wind just before you
got the tailwheel on the ground. We mostly wheel landed Beech 18s.
The remedy for this was to have power on the upwind engine there before
the problem got out of hand. The best way to do this, I found, was to
have the throttles staggered all the way down the approach in order to
provide the yaw to counteract the wing down you neccesarily had to have.
You staggered the throttles to give the total power you needed to make
the approach and at the same time you had enough where no rudder was
necessary. This ensured that the thrust at touchdown on the upwind
engine was enough to keep you straight and had the added benefit of
giving you rudder in reserve in both directions to keep the nose
straight as you rolled out. The rudder became a sort of fine tuning
device, IOW, with the thrust providing the lion's share of directional
control. You'd find a place where the stagger was doing all of this for
you and then just keep the stagger the same as you manipulated the
throttles on the approach for speed and glide. On touchdown, the
throttles would be moved back, the downwind engine reaching it's stop,
and then you'd just leave the upwind engine where it was until the
tailwheel was firmly down. Then the upwind throttle could be smoothly
closed as required. I think I might have tried this in some other light
twins, but it just seemed silly and redundant in them. I don't think I
ever had anything else in quite so much wind though. It didn't work so
well in the DC 3 either.

Bertie