"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...

I've achieved some fairly high descent rates (faster than I could
normally achieve by other means), but not as fast as I've been led to
believe a slip could achieve. The plane keeps wanting to fly.

As long as their is unbroken airflow over the wings, there will be lift.
If there's one single indicator of the effectiveness of a slip, it's
probably the VSI
(vertical speed indicator, or rate-of-climb indicator.) If it's an extreme
slip, another indicator might be your unnerved passenger contemplating
exiting the airplane before landing, but that's one of those
seat-of-your-pants indicators that should be avoided.

The plane will still keep flying--you want it to. You REALLY don't want
that airflow boundary layer to separate from the wing. But if your normal
rate of descent at a given airspeed and power confuration is, say, 500 fpm,
in a slip the airspeed will be about the same but your rate of descent would
indicate maybe 1000 fpm. (These numbers are just for example and not
reflective of any particular aircraft.)

I presume that if I do it correctly, then, there should be no change
in the actual direction of motion of the aircraft, but only a change
in its orientation in the air, right? I haven't achieved that thus
far.

Correct. In the slip, the airplane will seem to have one wing pointed
forward and tipped down. The pilot will keep the airplane ground track
aligned with the runway, but the nose will actually be a few degrees off of
center.

So if I'm going straight in and I do a forward flip, I should be able
to look off to the left out the window and see the runway approaching
me

Yes. Probably somewhere around 11 o'clock to the nose.

-c