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Chapter-11 Crosswinds and Slips-V20_Sport Pilot Handbook 8/30/2021 4:37 PM Page 17

Chapter 11: Crosswinds and Slips 11-17

Entering a Forward Slip

D
Control descent rate
and ground track with
ailerons deflection

A
Begin by deflecting the
aileron in the direction
you desire to foward slip
E
B The airplane tracks
The airplane’s nose runway centerline
initially yaws in the
opposite direction of
aileron application
C
Add opposite rudder to
sustain the desired angle
Fig. 19 of slip with the flightpath

limited by the efficiency of the airplane’s rudder to A Shallow Forward Slip
maintain a heading at an angle to the flight path.
This is known as the airplane’s practical slip limit.
For a dress, this is the length of hemline.
On airplanes with smaller rudder surfaces, it’s dif- Less deflection
ficult to induce more than a moderate amount of for- of the controls
ward slipping. Fly an airplane with a large rudder
surface and you’ll be surprised at how steep the slip
angle can be. Then again, even in airplanes that can
make steep forward slips, it’s not always necessary
to slip steeply. You only need to deflect the rudder
and aileron to the degree necessary to achieve the re- Fig. 20
quired descent rate (Figures 20 and 21). A little slip
will do ya. A Steeper Forward Slip
In a slip, one side of the fuselage is exposed to the
relative wind, which produces an enormous increase
in drag. This requires you to reduce the pitch atti-
tude (decrease the wings’ angle of attack) sufficiently More deflection
of the controls
to maintain the correct approach speed. In doing so
you’re actually moving slightly farther from the crit-
ical angle of attack. The exposure of the side of the
airplane’s fuselage to the relative wind is also provid-
ing some of the lift sustaining the airplane in a non-
accelerated descent (meaning that the airspeed can
remain constant while descending). Fig. 21