gallois wrote:
When you decrab just before the wheels touch
Isn’t that a sideslip? it’s just a matter at what height you do it or what you like to call it
No, not really, you decrab during your normal flare, although I suppose if you were pedantic you could say that every landing and roll out where the wind is not in the axe and where cross controls, even secondary effects from the prop, however minor, is a slip.
But is that the subject or object of this thread?
I wonder, considering no wind or straight head wind, how do people center the aircraft, if ever so minute, if not by side slipping ?
I suppose its side slipping without the slip.
I wonder, considering no wind or straight head wind, how do people center the aircraft, if ever so minute, if not by side slipping ?
I think Wolfgang Langewiesche in his book Stick & Rudder has some nice explanations, one of the perpetual myths was “kicking drift with the rudder in crab”: if you are wing level with nose pointing toward runway heading during flare, you are not going straight along the runway axis in crosswinds no matter what you do with the rudder 
he also joked about how pilots can get tired when flying cross country using left rudder to counter the wind drift from the left when maintaining their planned ground tracks
On the ground, it’s different one has wheels friction to help but don’t abuse it, the drift is always there unless you put the ailerons into wind…
The drift exist all the time when wings are level, if it helps think about landing a balloon with crosswinds !
It will be interesting to see how a pure crab landing without any sideslip component would work in wet grass runway, iced paved runway and snow/water surfaces? and how much flimsy or retractable undercarriage can take as max side load from it on paved dry runways?
Didn’t Cessna have a landing gear mechanism that would pivot so that one could land crabbed in a crosswind? I think it was an option on the 195.
@Ibra if you prefer landing on one wheel with the into wind wing less than a foot off the floor and keep straight on the centre line, that’s fine. Whatever works for you.
I don’t like that way of landing in a crosswind, although I did learn it and tried it for a while. I just found that I preferred to crab in as I have described. I have used this method on both wet grass and very wet tarmac without any adverse effects. I have never tried it on an icy runway or one one which snow is lying. Before I do either, I think I might go to Alaska for a bit of ice lake training first. I do know instructors who use the crab method to land D140’s on glaciers but I wouldn’t do that either, without further training.
Off_Field wrote:
Didn’t Cessna have a landing gear mechanism that would pivot so that one could land crabbed in a crosswind? I think it was an option on the 195.
They did for early models, they had castering wheels and could take load of crosswind, those first aircrafts is so rare and very capable (weather, load, runway) that you will have to kill or steal to get your hand on one
gallois wrote:
Whatever works for you
Both crab & slip work fine depending on type & conditions but I need both when it’s above 20kts crosswinds…
Ahh whatever turns you on.
gallois wrote:
Before I do either, I think I might go to Alaska for a bit of ice lake training first
No need to go all the way to Alaska. Lots of frozen lakes here soon.
