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iamtheari said:
I read the fuel exhaustion issue into the discussion but there was a clear undertone of “What do you do if the wind stays too bad for you to land?” Running out of gas is a possible consequence of going around too many times before deciding to divert. You can have a 3-hour fuel reserve when you first arrive and still run out a mile from the airport. There are many opportunities to exercise good judgment.
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If forced to choose between running out of gas and landing in a crosswind that exceeds aircraft capability, I'll take my chances on the latter. Obviously several judgment errors have to be committed to get to that point, but if you don't have enough reserve, then the only answer is "land anyways".

Of course none of us would ever put ourselves in that position, because we NEVER make errors in judgement. The other guy does that. :rolleyes:
 
iamtheari said:
I read the fuel exhaustion issue into the discussion but there was a clear undertone of “What do you do if the wind stays too bad for you to land?” Running out of gas is a possible consequence of going around too many times before deciding to divert. You can have a 3-hour fuel reserve when you first arrive and still run out a mile from the airport. There are many opportunities to exercise good or bad judgment.
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FIFY. And if you spent three hours trying to land instead of diverting, you may have cornered the market.
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For me, I got used to flying and the motion sickness over time or whatever it was that made me feel uneasy.

I went to my first lesson with a friend, the CFI went up in high winds and did 60deg bank turns. My friend never had another lesson.

You don’t know how other people feel so start slow. <10kts and no steep turns.

My rule of thumb today is <50kts and wind shear <30kts. I delayed a flight before that was 55-60kts until winds were closer to 40kts. That was a lot. I wouldn’t do training on these but I would do a xc going to somewhere else. Training wise probably <15kts.
 
mandm said:
For me, I got used to flying and the motion sickness over time or whatever it was that made me feel uneasy.

I went to my first lesson with a friend, the CFI went up in high winds and did 60deg bank turns. My friend never had another lesson.

You don’t know how other people feel so start slow. <10kts and no steep turns.

My rule of thumb today is <50kts and wind shear <30kts. I delayed a flight before that was 55-60kts until winds were closer to 40kts. That was a lot. I wouldn’t do training on these but I would do a xc going to somewhere else. Training wise probably <15kts.
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50 knots on the ground in a light plane? Nope, not for me.
 
For planning purposes, my math is a little bit different. I look at: a) what's the wind now? b) how's that compared to what it is/was supposed to be? c) what's it predicted to be? So if it's pretty calm, and supposed to be calm, and not supposed to get much worse, than fine. If it's not great, but supposed to be not great, and supposed to be better, then probably. If it's not great, and either was supposed to be good and isn't or is supposed to get worse, then probably not. I don't fly for a living, I have some crosswind experience, and I'm a bit of a baby. I don't want to get stuck in something that I should have avoided, and then later have to explain why my crappy judgement led to a bent airplane.

For wind, I don't care much about winds aloft, unless it's going to give me a 30-40k ground speed, then maybe it's silly. Wind sheer or difference between ground and low altitude? Not a fan over over 20k, but I'm a bit of a baby.

For a light crosswind, I'll usually just slip, because it's maybe a little bit easier and I don't mind slips. But for more than a little bit I'll just fly an angle into the wind on the way down, wings level. I don't know what the crosswind component is, but to me up to maybe off 30 degrees from straight isn't unusual. That way I don't have to worry about running out of rudder and it's way more comfortable for me in gusts. Just keep tracking straight. A few feet up, swing it around and slip as required.
 
You find out how much wind is too much wind the instant your wheels leave the runway on take off. Of course, that information is useless at that point.

I did that once, planning to get night current in the C206 about 20 years ago (and I had probably around 800 hours in that aircraft at that time). I managed to fly the pattern and land safely in wild crosswind turbulence, but it was definitely one of those "Holy Crap!" moments, and I wisely decided to get night current some other time. ;)
 
The bottom line is that once you get your license and start flying places the wind isn't always going to be reliably predictable at your destination so there may come a time when you just have to give it a try and if you find on short final that it ain't gonna work then go somewhere else where it hopefully will.
 
Albany Tom said:
For planning purposes, my math is a little bit different. I look at: a) what's the wind now? b) how's that compared to what it is/was supposed to be? c) what's it predicted to be? So if it's pretty calm, and supposed to be calm, and not supposed to get much worse, than fine. If it's not great, but supposed to be not great, and supposed to be better, then probably. If it's not great, and either was supposed to be good and isn't or is supposed to get worse, then probably not. I don't fly for a living, I have some crosswind experience, and I'm a bit of a baby. I don't want to get stuck in something that I should have avoided, and then later have to explain why my crappy judgement led to a bent airplane.

For wind, I don't care much about winds aloft, unless it's going to give me a 30-40k ground speed, then maybe it's silly. Wind sheer or difference between ground and low altitude? Not a fan over over 20k, but I'm a bit of a baby.

For a light crosswind, I'll usually just slip, because it's maybe a little bit easier and I don't mind slips. But for more than a little bit I'll just fly an angle into the wind on the way down, wings level. I don't know what the crosswind component is, but to me up to maybe off 30 degrees from straight isn't unusual. That way I don't have to worry about running out of rudder and it's way more comfortable for me in gusts. Just keep tracking straight. A few feet up, swing it around and slip as required.
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Hi Tom, as I mentioned before wind forecasts are pretty much useless IMO. I still check them, but I take them with a grain of salt. AWOS, metars and ATIS on the other hand are better, far from perfect, but better. Foreflight is nice if you are connected to ads-b weather, you can get fairly recent winds and, at least on the plan I have, you can go into the airport tab, click on runway, and it will give you the wind split into head wind and cross wind. Once again, this can change by the minute, but it gives you a good idea of what to expect.

Beyond that, what I will do is listen to the Awos, atis, etc, get the current wind on the way in. Then I will calculate the crosswind component. For our PPL test we need to use a wiz wheel or some type of calculator and get an answer to the tenth of a mph. In reality that type of accuracy is never necessary, as the wind can change from second to second. As I gain experience I actually think that how that is taught does pilots a disservice. I find that an approximation however is very useful. The x-wind component is a simple trig calculation.

Bear with me here, without getting into too much detail, because it really doesn't matter, the crosswind component is the Sine of the difference between the runway heading and the wind direction. Now that sounds a little complicated, but it isn't. I'll calculate it out once here to show you how it works, but in the end you just need to memorize 3 or 4 numbers and you will have as accurate an estimate of crosswind as you will ever need in your flying.

Let's say I want to land on runway 05 and the wind is blowing at 10 knots from 080. To calculate the crosswind component I find the difference between the runway direction and wind direction, in this case 050 and 080. So that is 30 degrees. My xwind component = 10kts * sin30 = 10 * 0.5 = 5 knots. The crosswind in this case is 5 knots. That's how it is calculated, as you probably know.

I don't do this calculation. Instead I've memorized the crosswind multiplier for several wind angles. The ones I use are sin15 = 0.25 sin30= 0.5 sin45= 0.7 and sin 60 = 0.9 .

So for the following wind angles I use the following multipliers:

15 degrees = 0.25
30 degrees = 0.5
45 degrees = 0.7
60 degrees = 0.9
90 degrees = 1.0

That's what sticks in my head. So if I want to land on runway 12 and the wind 180 at 20 knots, I find the difference between the wind and the runway, in this case it's 60 degrees, then I multiply the wind times the 60 degree multiplier above, 20 * 0.9 = 18 knots. I would prepare mentally for ABOUT an 18 knot crosswind. Remember, the wind is almost always changing, so close enough is good enough in this case as far as I'm concerned. I'll do a couple more:

rwy 23 wind 260 at 15 260-230 = 30 so I get 15mph * 0.5 = 7.5 knot crosswind.
Rwy 33 wind 010 at 10 (360-330) +10= 40 so I get 10 mph * 0.7 = 7 knot crosswind. Remember, we don't need to be perfect, just close.

Now the pedantic and ocd amongst will point out the inaccuracy of what I do here, but since these numbers all vary anyway, they are close enough.

So memorize those 5 angles and the associated crosswind multiplier and you will quickly have a good idea of what you will see when you are close to the ground.
 
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PaulS said:
Hi Tom, as I mentioned before wind forecasts are pretty much useless IMO. I still check them, but I take them with a grain of salt. AWOS, metars and ATIS on the other hand are better, far from perfect, but better. Foreflight is nice if you are connected to ads-b weather, you can get fairly recent winds and, at least on the plan I have, you can go into the airport tab, click on runway, and it will give you the wind split into head wind and cross wind. Once again, this can change by the minute, but it gives you a good idea of what to expect.

......


So memorize those 5 angles and the associated crosswind multiplier and you will quickly have a good idea of what you will see when you are close to the ground.
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:) All of that is absolutely accurate, and the engineer in me thinks it's cool. But when I'm flying, I really don't want to do that in my head...and most of the places I go don't have awos, and I'm just going to assume that whatever the wind is, it's going to end up changing to a direct crosswind when I'm about 500' up. So what I do is line up on my final, and course correct to track straight down the runway. If I'm within 5 degrees or so of the runway direction, then there's little crosswind. I'll probably just slip it in. If I'm 20 degrees right, then I've got a decent crosswind from the right, and I kinda need to pay attention. The math part would be crosswind component = tan(flight angle from rw direction) * airspeed. The headwind component I don't really care about, unless it's gusty, and even then it's just to make sure I'm carrying maybe a tiny bit more speed, and more importantly don't let myself get low. Landing? Just land.

Wind speed and especially direction from a forecast can be pretty unpredictable, especially around here, I agree. But the trends are usually better. Or in other words, if it's already gusty, and there's a front starting to move through from the west, then I may stay on the ground. But if it's not too bad now, and it looks like things are clearing up, then different story. Different parts of the country have different things going on. Here in the winter, as you know, things can be weird. Rest of the time, to me not as unpredictable, but maybe that's in my head.

A student and a pilot needs to know the math behind it, you're right. But to learn it, I think you have to fly it.
 
Albany Tom said:
:) All of that is absolutely accurate, and the engineer in me thinks it's cool. But when I'm flying, I really don't want to do that in my head...and most of the places I go don't have awos, and I'm just going to assume that whatever the wind is, it's going to end up changing to a direct crosswind when I'm about 500' up. So what I do is line up on my final, and course correct to track straight down the runway. If I'm within 5 degrees or so of the runway direction, then there's little crosswind. I'll probably just slip it in. If I'm 20 degrees right, then I've got a decent crosswind from the right, and I kinda need to pay attention. The math part would be crosswind component = tan(flight angle from rw direction) * airspeed. The headwind component I don't really care about, unless it's gusty, and even then it's just to make sure I'm carrying maybe a tiny bit more speed, and more importantly don't let myself get low. Landing? Just land.

Wind speed and especially direction from a forecast can be pretty unpredictable, especially around here, I agree. But the trends are usually better. Or in other words, if it's already gusty, and there's a front starting to move through from the west, then I may stay on the ground. But if it's not too bad now, and it looks like things are clearing up, then different story. Different parts of the country have different things going on. Here in the winter, as you know, things can be weird. Rest of the time, to me not as unpredictable, but maybe that's in my head.

A student and a pilot needs to know the math behind it, you're right. But to learn it, I think you have to fly it.
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Yeah, that's the experience part of flying. I'm an engineer too. What I wrote should be taught IMO. It took me longer than it should have to realize how simple it was to figure crosswinds and that within a few knots is probably twice the accuracy you actually need due to the fact that on most days it's varying by that much.

The other one is the way side slips are taught. I was first taught that for side slips, you need to add aileron, then counteracting rudder, and it can vary and blah, blah, blah. One day, when it finally clicked, I realized the easy way to do it. Align the airplane parallel to the runway, use the aileron to stop the airplane from moving sideways off the centerline. If you need more or less aileron, the nose angle will start moving, don't let it with the rudder. No thinking involved, it's a reflex. No more trying to noodle it out, "well I added more right aileron, so I need to add a proportional amount of left rudder". Now it's just keep the nose where it's supposed to be, keep the airplane on the centerline. It's automatic. Run out of rudder? Better start thinking go around. Simple.
 
PaulS said:
Align the airplane parallel to the runway, use the aileron to stop the airplane from moving sideways off the centerline. If you need more or less aileron, the nose angle will start moving, don't let it with the rudder. No thinking involved, it's a reflex. No more trying to noodle it out, "well I added more right aileron, so I need to add a proportional amount of left rudder". Now it's just keep the nose where it's supposed to be, keep the airplane on the centerline. It's automatic. Run out of rudder? Better start thinking go around. Simple.
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That's why taildraggery is useful for skill development. Every landing is done like that.
 
No math needed - just fly the airplane, putting the inputs of aileron and rudder as required.

Crab the airplane down final then transition to a slip during the round out. No point in trying to keep the aircraft aligned with the runway down final since the wind speed and direction will vary, making for a pointless exercise in control jockeying to keep the alignment. Much easier to gently take out a little crab as one gets closer to the runway (where typically the crosswind, whatever it may be, is lower than aloft).

In a high crosswind, keep a little power in and work the upwind wheel onto the ground gently, then set down the downwind wheel and finally the nose wheel if present.
 
StraightnLevel said:
How much wind is acceptable for a training flight?
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Not a direct answer, but a story for your consideration. I was a new PP in 1979. I remember thinking, "Wow! My instructors are SO experienced. They're amazing!" And maybe they were. But they didn't like training in a lot of wind. About a month after I received my certificate, I rented an old 172 for a cross country trip. On return the next day the winds were 24 gusting to 31 and I flipped the plane as I turned off runway 25 after landing. Wind was from 210.

I had already borrowed a bunch of money to start my advanced training a month from then. Even though I later realized my mistake was simply not positioning the controls correctly when turning away from the wind, I told the school that a priority for me was to learn to control an aircraft in any wind condition. No flight cancellations for wind. After I got my CFI, I vowed to never let what happened to me happen to any of my students. There were many days that I was the only plane in the pattern with a student.

For me, this was a good decision. Today I have no problem flying in almost any wind condition. Not in a braggadocios way, but in a confident way. I have many things I can improve on right now, but not knowing how to fly in wind isn't one of them.

Learn how to control the aircraft no matter what is happening. Good luck with your training and future aviation activities. It's way too much fun.
 
Lon Stratton said:
Not a direct answer, but a story for your consideration. I was a new PP in 1979. I remember thinking, "Wow! My instructors are SO experienced. They're amazing!" And maybe they were. But they didn't like training in a lot of wind. About a month after I received my certificate, I rented an old 172 for a cross country trip. On return the next day the winds were 24 gusting to 31 and I flipped the plane as I turned off runway 25 after landing. Wind was from 210.

I had already borrowed a bunch of money to start my advanced training a month from then. Even though I later realized my mistake was simply not positioning the controls correctly when turning away from the wind, I told the school that a priority for me was to learn to control an aircraft in any wind condition. No flight cancellations for wind. After I got my CFI, I vowed to never let what happened to me happen to any of my students. There were many days that I was the only plane in the pattern with a student.

For me, this was a good decision. Today I have no problem flying in almost any wind condition. Not in a braggadocios way, but in a confident way. I have many things I can improve on right now, but not knowing how to fly in wind isn't one of them.

Learn how to control the aircraft no matter what is happening. Good luck with your training and future aviation activities. It's way too much fun.
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I had my PPL about 5 years before someone taught me "climb into, dive away."

That was Bob Hepp at Potomac Airfield. He taught me all the stuff that my original flight school omitted.
 
Ed Haywood said:
I had my PPL about 5 years before someone taught me "climb into, dive away." Bob Hepp at Potomac Airfield. He taught me all the stuff that my original flight school omitted.
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That was about lesson one in the windy place where I learned! You got heavily chewed out for not positioning the controls correctly (and for some reason the chief pilot thought you should know this already somehow cognitively, so many rapped knuckles and clipboard-to-head intersections were par for the course).

On the other hand, the student pilot crosswind limit was 12 knots direct. Otherwise you weren't flying much many days.
 
Steamflyer said:
That was about lesson one in the windy place where I learned! You got heavily chewed out for not positioning the controls correctly (and for some reason the chief pilot thought you should know this already somehow cognitively, so many rapped knuckles and clipboard-to-head intersections were par for the course).
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I was taught it, plus it was on the written I think. But it was an over-complicated breakdown. Led to analysis paralysis when making multiple 90 degree turns on ramps and taxiways. "Climb into, dive away" is simple and quick.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Can you explain this to me?
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It's about positioning the controls while you're taxiing and you should do it 100% of the time, even in light winds. If the wind is in your face, you "climb into" it, meaning you pull back on the yoke or stick and turn it toward where the wind is coming from. If the wind is behind you, you "dive away" from it, meaning you push forward on the yoke or stick and turn it away from where the wind is coming from.

The private pilot knowledge test will ask this in a different way, and you should be prepared to pass that test. You should also understand why these are the control movements that make sense when the plane is on the ground. But when you're struggling to keep the thing under control in gusty surface winds after you pulled off a sketchy crosswind landing in a lightweight taildragger, "climb into, dive away" is a lot easier to remember and to apply in the heat of battle.
 
And to be clear, it's the relative wind, not the "windsock" wind. So while you may dive away from the wind behind you when you start, as you taxi the relative wind can become zero and actually then become a relative headwind. (Fortunately, unless you taxi fairly fast it's not going to bite you if you do it wrong, but an examiner might test to see if you understand the principle.)
 
PaulS said:
Now the pedantic and ocd amongst will point out the inaccuracy of what I do here, but since these numbers all vary anyway, they are close enough.
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Numbers are OK, but like most flight instruction, it's not complete.

What I taught was relative wind. Sure, the crosswind at a certain angle and at a certain windspeed needs to be known and dealt with, but an awful lot of pilots get into trouble after touchdown, when they think the flight is over. Let's look at my numbers. Suppose we have a 15-knot crosswind at 90° to the runway, and we're touching down at 45 knots. The airplane "sees" a 47-knot wind at only 18° off the nose. Perfectly fine for most experienced PPLs, even in a tame taildragger. But as we slow down, that wind comes more and more from the side; it becomes more of a crosswind. At 20 knots the relative wind is now 37° to the nose, at 25 knots; the complacent pilot isn't holding full aileron into it and is depending entirely on the nose- or tailwheel to keep it straight. A small gust can either lift the wing and drag the wingtip, maybe turn the airplane right over onto its nose, or it weathercocks and goes into the rhubarb.

iamtheari said:
It's about positioning the controls while you're taxiing and you should do it 100% of the time
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If you tell the student that the airplane has to be flown until it's tied down, he'll get the point. With a tailwind of any sort, you're flying backwards, and the controls work backwards.

There is the occasional accident when a pilot taxis downwind when the wind is stronger, especially if backtracking on the runway, and turns around when still going too fast. The centrifugal force of that turn, combined with the wind on the side of the airplane, can lift the wing and drag the other wing, and the airplane can go right over onto its back as the wind gets under the tail and lifts it. The "footprint" of a trike, especially, is small between those three wheels, and it will not handle like your car, because it is not a car. Like a duck, it is clumsy on the ground and agile in the air. Driving it like a car results in grief sooner or later.
 
Ed Haywood said:
I had my PPL about 5 years before someone taught me "climb into, dive away."

That was Bob Hepp at Potomac Airfield. He taught me all the stuff that my original flight school omitted.
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Looking around at some of the pilot stuff seen out there, and looking back at my first instructor, I am so grateful that he insisted on proper control inputs on the ground. Even if it was a two or three knot wind, he wanted correct control movement, and from the first lesson taught to fly the plane from when it left the chocks to when it was back in them. It’s paid off more times than I can remember.

He wasn’t a taildragger guy, but told me that someday I’d be flying one, or at least be taxiing in enough wind that no control movement or the wrong one would be costly.
 
Dan Thomas said:
There is the occasional accident when a pilot taxis downwind when the wind is stronger, especially if backtracking on the runway, and turns around when still going too fast. The centrifugal force of that turn, combined with the wind on the side of the airplane, can lift the wing and drag the other wing, and the airplane can go right over onto its back as the wind gets under the tail and lifts it. The "footprint" of a trike, especially, is small between those three wheels, and it will not handle like your car, because it is not a car. Like a duck, it is clumsy on the ground and agile in the air. Driving it like a car results in grief sooner or later.
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That's especially important in a floatplane, where the wind AND THE WAVES are coming from the inside of the turn, and the typical pathway is direct downwind then turning firectly into the wind.
 
Not only should you train in windy, gusty conditions, but with flaps down landings (in a 172). This is what my instructor encouraged me to do, and it gave me lot of confidence, and discovery of the purpose of rudder pedals, even if the first many landings are rough or go arounds. How much wind is too much?...if gusts exceed the plane's maximum demonstrated cross wind component, then it's too much.
 
dbahn said:
And to be clear, it's the relative wind, not the "windsock" wind. So while you may dive away from the wind behind you when you start, as you taxi the relative wind can become zero and actually then become a relative headwind.
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This is important, and I have observed CFIs who do not think about this. Our trainers have pieces of yarn attached to the wingtips to help visualize what the wind is doing while taxiing.
 
n1g1a said:
How much wind is too much?...if gusts exceed the plane's maximum demonstrated cross wind component, then it's too much.
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It depends. For a student or relatively low time pilot, this is good advice. An experienced pilot can often handle a crosswind that is much higher than the manufacturer's demonstrated crosswind component.
 
Zeldman said:
If the chain tie downs are broken and the plane is wadded up into a ball and against the far fence, it may be too windy to fly..
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Too soon!

StraightnLevel said:
The reason I ask is that my instructor is pushing me to make the call on weather-related flights. I’m not sure that I have enough experience yet to know. Yesterday we went up with 10-15 knot gusting winds, and it was pretty bumpy - not a good use of the time.
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10-15 knot winds aren't alway bumpy. And, even when they are, they aren't always bumpy at all altitudes. This weather is good learning weather. Maybe it wasn't a good use of your time for maintaining altitude within 50ft of your target. Or for staying within 5 degrees of your desired course. Or not tasting your lunch a second time. But I bet it could be a good use of your time for learning how to make adjustments on the fly and learning the variables involved with working with wind...
 
Before I started flying I knew I'd over think everything. Just my nature, and that of a lot of technical people probably. That's why I wanted to start with tailwheel, to make sure I learned the basics more by feel than numbers. I *still* tried to over analyze things, but I think it helped immensely.

One thing about crosswinds, now that I think of it, I think it's important to learn how to do slips to the point that they become a lot of fun, to get experience in swinging the plane around to point forward just before landing. Being able to do that without thinking about it makes coming out of a crosswind correct ("crab") second nature.

I disagree that 'max demonstrated crosswind' is a limitation or that exceeding it is necessarily unwise. It's only 20mph in a PA-28. It can be a guide that 'no degree of exceptional skill or alertness is required' for that crosswind, which could roughly be translated to 'any pilot can do this', but that's pretty subjective no matter how it's sliced.
 
PaulS said:
That's what sticks in my head. So if I want to land on runway 12 and the wind 180 at 20 knots, I find the difference between the wind and the runway, in this case it's 60 degrees, then I multiply the wind times the 60 degree multiplier above, 20 * 0.9 = 18 knots.
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Certainly a close enough approximation. Probably closer than it needs to be, because it raises the question, "Okay, now that you have a number, what will you do with it?" It's not like you say, well for 18 knots crosswind I'll bank 9 degrees and use 15% rudder.

I only do even a rough calculation if the wind speed is above the demonstrated xwind capability, just to see that the actual xwind is not significantly greater than the demonstrated value. Otherwise, I just fly the plane - aileron as needed to stay centered, rudder as needed to stay aligned. If I run out of control authority, I go around.

If my control inputs are "as needed" anyway, I don't really need a number other than to ensure the wind is within the capabilities of me and the plane.

And the gusts matter more than the steady-state wind anyway. I'd much rather have a 20 knot steady wind than 5 knots gusting to 15.
 
Gilbert Buettner said:
An experienced pilot can often handle a crosswind that is much higher than the manufacturer's demonstrated crosswind component.
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Maybe. Maybe not.

AFAIK, there's no technical specification for the max demonstrated xwind. If it was the best a skilled test pilot could achieve with controls at maximum deflection, I doubt anyone will be able to handle a xwind "much higher" than that demonstrated.

Your statement may be true for some planes, but I wouldn't bank on it being always true.
 
Albany Tom said:
I disagree that 'max demonstrated crosswind' is a limitation or that exceeding it is necessarily unwise. It's only 20mph in a PA-28. It can be a guide that 'no degree of exceptional skill or alertness is required' for that crosswind, which could roughly be translated to 'any pilot can do this', but that's pretty subjective no matter how it's sliced.
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Depends on the plane. For the LSAs I trained in, max demonstrated was a pretty good limit, and when I landed in xwinds close to it I had the rudder pedal on the floor. Those planes simply weren't going to do much better than that.
 
Half Fast said:
Certainly a close enough approximation. Probably closer than it needs to be, because it raises the question, "Okay, now that you have a number, what will you do with it?" It's not like you say, well for 18 knots crosswind I'll bank 9 degrees and use 15% rudder... I just fly the plane - aileron as needed to stay centered, rudder as needed to stay aligned.
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:yeahthat: You move the controls as necessary to keep the plane on track.

For me, almost every landing approach is slipping to a greater or lesser degree, both for glide path control (no flaps) and to see over the nose (rear seat on a biplane). I generally come out of the slip just as I flare in one [hopefully] smooth motion My crosswind limitation (haven't reached it yet) is how low the upwind wing can go before it touches the ground.
 
Rule of thumb for crosswind component:
30 degrees crosswind - crosswind component is 50% of the wind speed
45 degrees - 75%
60 degrees - 100%

It’s good to know the crosswind component to decide which runway to use, or if it’s ridiculous, decide to divert, but in the end you fly the centerline and do what you need to do with the controls to hold a straight line.
 
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