Crosswinds tick!

Some absolutely awesome flying was had yesterday morning. At 6AM the windsock was showing a strong crosswind from the south, so I took off with Lee in BUQ, the other Cessna 152, for a session of crosswind circuits. This was pretty much the same drill as last time, using runway 07 with a strong crosswind from the right, just with no rain.

In the pre-flight briefing we had decided to use only 20 degrees of flaps and aim for 75 knots on base and 70 on final. Crosswind landings require a lot of rudder and aileron work, and these 5 extra knots make a real difference when the moment comes to swing the nose of the plane back onto the centreline and keep it there while flaring.

The other advantage of an increased airspeed is in reducing the angle of attack required for creating a given amount of lift, which increases the margin between our angle of attack at any given moment and the angle of attack at which stall happens. This is particularly important in turbulent and gusty conditions, such as this morning, since a sudden change in airflow direction could stall one wing, or both, which is a sure recipe for disaster at a few hundred feet above the ground.


On the base leg I applied myself to maintaining 75 knots and controlling our rate of descent so as to end up between 600 and 700ft when turning final. The reason behind that is to ensure that we are established on final not below 500ft. This is not an actual regulation, but more of a best practice to make sure we have enough time to get ourselves sorted out on final.

This is not really hard in fact, just a matter of concentrating and maintaining the proper scan between the runway, the ASI and the altimeter. One reason why you want to really stick to the airspeed of 75 knots in the Cessna 152 is that Vfe is 85 knots. It only takes a gust of headwind and a couple of seconds of inattention for the airspeed to reach the end of the white arc.

My landings this time were a lot better than the time before. I was careful to really fly the plane all the way down. I only flared too high on one occasion today, which is a definite improvement over last time too. Lee suggested that I removed the crab as I crossed the fence, i.e. way earlier than in my previous session. This worked wonders.


Doing so gave me enough time to transition properly to the wing-down technique after removing the crab and make sure I was tracking along the centreline before starting to flare. After flaring I forced myself to give the plane enough time to float above the runway and decide itself when to touch the ground. This was no problem since I could control track and heading with rudder and aileron. On a couple of occasions I could even distinctly hear the upwind main wheel touch the ground before the other one (and before the nose wheel), which is very rewarding.

In total I did five good landings, and as a result Lee gave me a tick for crosswinds. This means I can now go solo to the training area over Bribie Island. Actually, I already went solo there about a month ago, but that was early in the morning on a day with no wind, either actual or forecasted. I still need to complete about two hours of solo airwork before being able to attempt the GFPT test, which is still scheduled for February 29th.

During one circuit this morning a Cessna Caravan called inbound from above Brisbane International control tower as we were turning onto the crosswind leg. Lee called him and proposed to extend our downwind leg to let him land first, which the pilot of the Caravan gladly accepted. On late downwind the Caravan called a short base turn. I looked over my left shoulder and could see the Caravan in a tight descending turn that clearly indicated there weren’t any passengers on board. This was a Caravan from Seair Pacific, a Queensland charter operator based on the Gold Coast. A few minutes later it made a departure call for Lady Elliot Island, which is about 50 nautical miles north-east of Bundaberg, in the top right corner of the Brisbane WAC chart.

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, we’ll go to the training area to practice compass turns. This is again a 6AM-8AM booking, which means getting up at sparrow’s fart for the second day in a row. But flying in the early morning has this way of putting a smile on my face for the rest of the day, so I really cannot complain.

More crosswind landings and a shutdown blunder

Last Friday I went flying in the early afternoon. The cloud base was definitely above 1000ft, but wind was a concern. As usual when bad weather is forecasted I rang the club before leaving home. Mal asked what I intended to do, I said crosswind circuits, which he was happy to hear since that was pretty much the only thing on the menu in Redcliffe on that day.

We did six landings on runway 07 in the course of 1.1 hour. I did the first one, then Mal demonstrated the second one, which was of great help, and I did all the other ones. We had rain from time to time but not much, and certainly less than the last time.

Before taking off we discussed where the wind would be coming from on all legs of the circuit, and what that would mean for our angle of climb or descent and how we would counter drift in each case. The wind was a south-easterly, which gave us a crosswind coming from the right on take-off and on final.

After lining up I turned the ailerons into the wind to prevent the wind from lifting up the upwind wing during the take-off roll. A few seconds after leaving the ground the plane started to weathercock into the wind. It is a good thing to let the plane turn into the wind a little to counteract the crosswind and track along the extended runway centerline, but not too much otherwise you’ll end up flying straight into the wind!

On the crosswind leg we had a tailwind and therefore an increased groundspeed, which made our angle of climb shallower. As a consequence, it was not possible to reach 1000ft before turning downwind, so I turned downwind at about 800ft and kept climbing.

On downwind the wind came from the left and had to be offset by pointing the nose to the left of where I wanted the plane to go. The turn to base gave us a headwind, which meant that I had to add a bit of extra power to get a lower rate of descent while maintaining an airspeed of 70kt. Mal had me look at the ground to better realize how slow our groundspeed was, and indeed the ground wasn’t moving very fast.

We made the turn to final in such a way as to end up on the upwind side of the extended centreline, i.e. to the right in our case. I pointed the nose to the right of the runway and crabbed it all the way down. I managed to maintain the final speed of 65kt reasonably well.

Prior to entering the plane I had discussed with Mal my initial idea of removing the crab ahead of time in order to not have to do too many things at the same time. He didn’t recommend it, saying it was something that would come later with experience, rather than a useful technique to learn crosswinds.

I did a couple of good landings, and even one where the upwind wheel touched the ground before the other main wheel, followed by the nose wheel. OK, I also did a landing when all three wheels contacted the ground at about the same time, which was less good. And even one where, according to Mal, I was very lucky not to have the tail hit the ground.

I faced a number of problems on that day that need fixing if I want to be able to land safely in strong crosswinds. They’re more or less all related to the timing of the flare.

The first problem was with keeping the nose down and maintaining the 65kt airspeed all the way down final before the flare. I would start to pull the nose up slightly at about 100ft which could potentially bring us dangerously close to the stall speed. My normal scan on short final is to go back and forth between the runway and the airspeed indicator. I think I spent too much time looking at my position with respect of the runway because of the crosswind and didn’t notice the airspeed decrease.

A related problem was that I flared too high on almost every landing. I don’t really understand why, since I had managed to get the flare consistently right in the past on landings where the crosswind component was negligible. My guess is that after I removed the crab I was concerned with not letting the airplane drift downwind, which is why I hurried the landing sequence by flaring too early. Not that it would have made the plane touch the ground any earlier of course.

After landing and clearing the runway we taxied back to the apron making sure to turn the ailerons into the wind. During the shutdown checklist I did one of the most stupid things I have done so far in an airplane.


When doing the magneto check before turning off the engine, I turned the key one notch too far to the left when selecting the right magneto, i.e. to the “off” position. I realised immediately what I had done and turned the key all the way to the “both” position. The engine ran rough for a second or so and then returned to normal. This in itself was no big deal, and is even a normal part of the shutdown sequence on some aircrafts. It is known as a dead-cut check and is supposed to check that the grounding of the magneto switch is correct, i.e. that no magneto is live after shutdown. A bunch of people with a lot more experience than I have discussed the pros and cons of the dead-cut check on pprune.org.

What was really stupid is that I got distracted by this small incident and carried on to switching the engine off using the key, just like a car. The normal procedure is to starve the engine of fuel by bringing the mixture control to the aptly named idle cut-off position. The engine of course eventually stopped after I realised my mistake and pulled the mixture control all the way back. But for a few long seconds the engine made unhappy noises. Maybe it was just fatigue at the end of a demanding hour in the air, but if that’s the case that’s worrying, the flight is only over when the engine is shut down. I still feel upset at myself for doing such a stupid thing.

In summary, some progress made on crosswind landings, but more work still needs to be done, especially on safely controlling the aircraft in the final stage of the landing. Keep the nose down when the runway is approaching, maintain that 65kt airspeed, remove the crab and then flare normally as I would do on any “normal” landing.

Clouds, rain and demanding crosswind landings

I went flying on Friday. Sort of. At lunchtime the reported wind in Redcliffe was 15 knots with a crosswind component of about 12 knots, much better than the days before. Still quite close to the 15 knots crosswind limitation of the 152 though, but the wind was expected to fall in the afternoon, so there was a glimmer of hope that I would go flying.

I called the club and Scott, one of the new instructors, said that if I wanted to come over we could go do some crosswind circuits. That sounded like a plan, so I grabbed my flight bag and drove to Redcliffe. Soon after I hit the Bruce Highway the rain grew very strong. I spotted a car in the ditch at the Redcliffe exit ramp which looked like it had spun out of control after taking the turn too fast.

It was a full house at the club since no-one was flying. Lots of new faces on the other side of the counter too since the club hired quite a few new instructors recently. I said hi, grabbed the folder for VH-IVW and went to pre-flight the plane under light rain. Everything was in order with full tanks, so I went back inside to fill in the sign-out sheet and soon Scott and I made our way to the plane.

Right after leaving our parking spot I tested my brakes and the left main wheel skidded on the wet tarmac. We taxied for runway 25 and couldn’t hear anyone on the CTAF frequency at all, even though it is shared between the aerodromes of Redcliffe, Caboolture and Caloundra.

Soon after take-off it became clear that we were heading straight into one of the numerous dark fractostratus clouds that were hanging around the aerodrome. Scott said we’ll be doing 500ft circuits today instead of the normal 1000ft so as to stay clear of clouds. That sounded like a very sensible idea. Scott said he had been to Maroochydore in the morning and at some point the cloud base was as low as 400ft.

On the first circuit my downwind leg was a bit too far, I doubt I could have glided back to the runway in case of engine failure. The crosswind final was OK, I had no problem maintain my track along the extended runway centreline. I had a bit of trouble removing the crab and lining up the plane with the runway on short final though, so Scott jumped in and gave me a hand with the flare and rudder work.

On the second circuit my spacing was better. On downwind I was flying parallel to the runway and in the direction of the marina at the tip of the Redcliffe peninsula. I tried to maintain exactly 65 knots on final which helped with the landing flare but I didn’t put enough right rudder in, so here again Scott had to jump in. As soon as the nose of the plane was pointing down the runway again, Scott handed the controls back to me. Heels on the ground, flaps to 10, ailerons into the wind, full power and soon we were airborne again for our third circuit.

The rain grew a lot stronger on the crosswind leg, and by the time I turned downwind it was pounding the poor 152. The rain was coming in from the sea and reduced our visibility to the point that I could only see the tip of the peninsula as a darker shade of gray through the rain. As we passed abeam the threshold of runway 25 Scott decided to take over the controls and perform a full stop landing. The cool thing is that I could witness a textbook crosswind landing. During the flare Scott kept the height of the plane constant with lots of small pitch adjustments. We touched on the upwind wheel first, then the other main wheel, then the nose wheel. Just like it says in the book :-)

All in all that was only .4 of an hour spent in the air but I don’t regret going. That was my first time flying in such poor meteorological conditions. I started my training last March, at the end of the Australian summer, so I’ve had mostly very pleasant conditions so far. Only once last year did I have to cancel a lesson because of the weather.

I spent the next half-hour at the club booking lessons for the next month and a bit. I had to reschedule my GFPT pre-test and actual test because the weather won’t allow me to finish all the flying before the end of January as originally planned. The test is now scheduled for February 29th, which hopefully will give me ample time to prepare.

I realised that I still need to do a lot of work on crosswind landings. Parts of my problem today was due to the fact that I removed the crab too late, which meant I had to do too many things at the same time: straighten the nose with rudder, roll the wings into the wind while at the same time keeping an eye on the airspeed, controlling the flare and checking for drift.

What I’ll do next time is remove the crab a lot earlier, say when I pass 200ft and remove carby heat, so that hopefully I will have the longitudinal axis of the plane nicely aligned with the runway centreline and drift countered with aileron by the time I start the flare.

I have a lesson booked for next week Thursday. If the weather ends up as forecasted it’ll be a crosswind lesson again. My objective is to fly well enough so that the instructor will not have to take over at any stage. Let's see how we do on this one.