Max takeoff crosswind component for Tri-Pacer?

[EdH]

Flying in SE Arizona, the wind can sometimes get pretty tricky. You can leave early in the day with no wind, and return at the end of the day with 15-20. Believe it or not but 12-18 gusting to 21 can be the norm sometimes. On takeoff I do just about the same thing that Forrest uses, As for the interconnect, you learn to not notice that they are there, and just fly the Airplane. When it comes to landing I have learned, and works pretty good for me is to land with no flaps, works pretty good especially with wind gusts.

[Subsonic]

I was an instructor for a few years and saw quite a few different techniques for take offs.

I think what's making your takeoff hard at your upper limits is the application of down elevator trying to pin the nose.....with this technique your trying to steer the airplane at both ends, which is creating a wrestling match between tarmac and flight controls.

I will suggest you try this method if your comfortable with it.

Try starting with full aileron into wind and neutral elevator, keep your aileron full lock until the downwind wing starts to slightly rise, then relax it slightly, but keep more input in than you would normally. This pins the into wind main gear firmly on the runway, and will provide a firm contact patch where the rudder can be used to keep the airplane aligned with the runway. Since the aircraft is almost ready to fly, all it needs is some up elevator and slight relaxing of the aileron input just as the plane leaves the runway.....but not before!

Read that through a few times, and mentally go through a take off while sitting in you hangar a few times before trying it out, It worked for a lot of my students.

I am not sure how the aileron/rudder interconnect will affect my technique, guys with more experience on type should be able to help in that department.

This was also very helpful and I will practice it. My plane has the interconnect removed.

[Stephen]

Lots of impressive information here.

Cross wind component is the protion of the wind that is 90 degrees to the runway. 30 mph wind down the runway has zero crosswind component. 30 mph wind at 45 degrees to the runway has a 15 mph (correction about 21 mph) crosswind component.

Our airport can often have highly turbulent gusting croswinds. I find that faster no flap approaches create a long drawn out flare and wrestling match with the controls. I use flaps (our flaps are not very large), a little power and keep my AS 15 to 20 mph above my (actual) stall speed. This may not work as well for tri gear.

[Troy Hamon]

The airplane can handle 20 kts or more of direct crosswind. Practice makes it possible for a pilot to also handle 20 kts or more! The attitude is very wing low, but the short wings make that an option.

[Jim]

Hi,

The problem I most remember in the wind was the taxi after landing. When aiming directly into the wind it was feeling real light, even with the wheel full forward. Giving as little throttle as it took to roll forward, it started bouncing side to side on the mains. Couldn't raise the tail by dragging the brakes like we've all seen tail draggers do, just scary for me. I don't start flights in winds like those. Gradually I milked it back to my home hangar.

[Tailwind_Fan]

Sorry, but a 30 mph wind at a 45* angle isn't 15mph, it's just over 21 mph ( or roughly 0.7071 x the wind speed). Just to prove it to yourself take the square root of [(21.21)squared + (21.21)squared]

-Alana

[Stephen]

Sorry, but a 30 mph wind at a 45* angle isn't 15mph, it's just over 21 mph ( or roughly 0.7071 x the wind speed). Just to prove it to yourself take the square root of [(21.21)squared + (21.21)squared]

-Alana

Thanks for the correction. The sine of 45 degrees is .7071, should have remembered.

[Subsonic]

The airplane can handle 20 kts or more of direct crosswind. Practice makes it possible for a pilot to also handle 20 kts or more! The attitude is very wing low, but the short wings make that an option.

Hi Troy,
Yeah, I'm pretty confident in landing in fairly strong crosswinds. I use 1 notch of flaps or no flaps with a windward wing low approach. I've done many of those at my old airport in Marina CA (KOAR) where it was very common to have 40 to 50 degrees at 15 to 25 knots and gusting higher, generating crosswind components of 10 to 18 knots and higher. They're not fun for sure.

My real issue is taking off. I asked the question just to get a feel for what other shortwing pilots limits are on takeoff, and because it seems so many accidents or incidents occur due to crosswinds while on the ground during takeoff, or just after landing. I mean, even Draco had a takeoff problem, right?

We moved to the FL 18 months ago and now I'm flying out of Titusville FL (KTIX) which is a towered airport. The winds here on the central coast of FL can be any direction one day to next in winter and our runways are 18/36 and 9/27 so it has a lot of flexibility, until you get runway 27 with winds 230 at 17, gusting to 25 like the other day. The controllers keep up with the shifting winds pretty well and I've actually been taxiing to one runway when the controller changed me to another runway midway across the field. You can't put a wing low when you take off, and I can feel the wing lifting the main which introduces some "roll-steer" in the trike so my feet are really busy when it starts gusting. The wings are level and all you have is full aileron and rudder and it's just squirrely as I can feel the wind side trying to fly. Our runways here are long and wide so when faced with this in the future, I'm going to try the diagonal departure like some have mentioned, and combine that with a neutral elevator as was recommended.

[Pacerfgoe]

You can't put a wing low when you take off, and I can feel the wing lifting the main which introduces some "roll-steer" in the trike so my feet are really busy when it starts gusting. .

The whole idea of a crosswind takeoff IS to get a wing low, or apply forces so that the upwind wing wants to drop as you roll on down the runway. The roll steer you feel is caused by the nose wheel, so apply a touch of up elevator to get the weight off the nose wheel and let the rudder do the steering.

[dgapilot]

And don’t forget you can always go on a diagonal to reduce the cross wind component. There is nothing that says you have to follow the centerline!


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