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Holy Wing Tip Strike Batman!
- Thread starter HAL Pilot
- Start date
submarinerssbn
New Member
wow
phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
Huh? Airlines fly with a crab until just prior to touchdown, then switch to wing down top rudder at the bottom. That's what he did, and when he tried to transition - you can see how strong the wind was...
My statement was more of a joke from getting harped on by my on-wing for not saying "wing down top rudder" to him outloud...
However, that guy was WAY too late in transitioning into a wing down top rudder. Yes, they do crab in on approach but it's kind of a technique thing from when you transition. Some guys like 1,000ft others over the lights, numbers or whatever. There is no gospel in where you should do it. I am sure that landing would have been hard as hell with those winds but he f-ed it up.
Interested to hear some of the airline types comments on the landing...
Reminds me of quite a few landings in the Tomahawks at KPNS. With 17/35 closed we had mad crosswinds to fight on landing most of the time. Good save.
Not necessarily. Crabs get kicked out in the flare all the time. You just have to make sure your technique is right.
To me it seems that when he kicked out the crab, the wings very briefly went level and then the wrong (left) wing went down. He then hit the right wing tip when he was trying to correct.
The left wing might have gone down originally because of wind tossing the right wing up, but that is the pilot's fault. He should have been ready for it and put the right wing down as he kicked out the crab.
Not quite as cut & dried as that, Rotary-Breath. To piggy-back on what HAL said above:
We do it both ways on the Whale. Like most things "Aviation": it depends. Crab or wing down/top rudder; it can go either way. I can go either way. :icon_wink
For me, it usually depends on the actual wind/WX conditions--how strong is the X-wind, am I IFR ???, did I just cross the Pacific and am I dog-tired ??, etc....... no one-size-fits-all.
Wing down/top rudder (WDTR)---that's my friend
......until @ 50' AGL when you make your transition to landing flare----after touchdown -- put the aileron back in to keep the upwind wing from rising. You also have to steer with the rudders/nosewheel steering--obviously. In some limits X-wind conditions I could not really keep centerline with both working--just minimize the drift. You also must be very judicious with your ailerons to not skag #1 or #4 engine pod on the ground---some have 
, much to their dismay.Some guys--myself included--favor a slight, repeat: SLIGHT upwind lineup orientation if we are going to "crab" all the way down glide slope. Makes the workload a little less on approach. We are on the end of a long "moment arm" way out there in the B747 cockpit. If you visually put the cockpit on centerline in a crab---you will be offset on the downwind side when you take the crab out to line up in close.
Soooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o .... a typical Whale high X-wind approach & landing might be:
Crab for the approach....
...to WDTR in-close ..
...to finesse the CL and flare..
...to wings level touchdown..
...to immediate aileron into the wind & steer with rudder/NWS..
...to go to the hotel......... and what time does Happy Hour go down here???
p.s. .... congrats on becoming a CAPT again ... now we're the "same rank" ....
I'm awaiting an E-6 guy to come in and give his piece. From a bud of mine (who showed the clearance when we flew into OKC one time), there's very, very little room for a WDTR approach, so they only do it in the flare (as he described it to me).
@Loadtoad,
I know you were joking, in part, but WDTR is a technique (like you said). You should be doing it in Primary, certainly, but in the T-34, flying the crab until the flare works just fine, too (on a non-syllabus flight, of course).
@Loadtoad,
I know you were joking, in part, but WDTR is a technique (like you said). You should be doing it in Primary, certainly, but in the T-34, flying the crab until the flare works just fine, too (on a non-syllabus flight, of course).
That shouldn't be surprising. The crab would have decreased lift on the right wing. That rapid of a removal of the crab should have added a lot of lift (big wing) to the right side. So, everything happened just like one should expect. Obviously the guys in the cockpit were not expecting it or they would have been countering with aileron or something...
The media is reporting (so, take it with a grain of salt) that the winds were as high as 150 mph. If that were really true, I would think the right answer would have been to not even try to land there...
But, what do I know?:captain_1
One more thing about the approach in this link: the guy should NEVER have made his play for the centerline when/as he did -- and don't say: "well, you weren't there", first -- 'cause that kind of attitude-stuff doesn't cut it -- and second -- 'cause I instructed it, and I was "there", many, many times over a 40 year flying career .... i.e., once @ GUM w/ 60 knots variable quartering X-winds on the backside of a typhoon (not X-wind component) that turned out to be a quartering TAILWIND during the ADF-to-visual approach ...
At the moment of "truth", I said aloud to my two very, very quiet crewmembers
..."THIS AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN ....GIMME GO-AROUND POWER, FLAPS 10", etc., etc. .... as it turned out, the tower was using the "wrong" runway for the wind conditions and I was the first bird in there for two days. Since I then realized the tower was AFU and I was running out of gas and had no viable BINGO (SPN was too far to try as the conditions were roughly the same) ... I TOLD them what I was going to do, and did it in the form of a semi-visual 180 and landed with assholes and elbows flying ...
Always check your OWN "6" ... 'cause YOU are the one who ultimately "owns" it.