Some are saying that by transitioning from a crab to a side slip on final in a crosswind you are not altering your track but in fact you are because you would not be on that track with your nose pointed in that direction if you weren't altering it with the side slip.
Here is where communication falls to pieces here. You say going from a crab to a slip alters your ground track. Most of us think of ground track as your path along the ground, not where the nose is pointed. Do we at least agree there? I cannot understand how you can say going from a crab to a slip in x-wind causes your track to change. The whole point of a x-wind landing approach is to transition from a crab to a slip
while staying on the runway track. What am I missing? The picture below is how most pilots land in a x-wind...track the runway in a crab and at some point before touchdown slip to align the nose, without changing track. You say you alter your track when entering a slip. So you do the runway drill angled approach method? That would be an unusual method.
You do this manipulation to keep your track constant with the side slip, you don't make turns.
You give the example of wind increasing and decreasing. If you're on short final in a x-wind, slipped, tracking, and aligned with the runway and all of a sudden the x-wind increases, causing you to drift downwind of centerline, what's your solution? To slip
harder, further deflecting
both the aileron and rudder? That will do nothing to stop the drift. You will need to
turn your flight path more into the wind to compensate for the increased x-wind. You DO need to turn.
If the wind picks up and you're starting to drift, you need to do a slight slipping TURN into the wind to realign your flight path to track the runway. You do this by either reducing the rudder input or increasing aileron deflection. You need to change your ground track if you are drifting off centerline. Just as doing slips in no wind, like I've done in my videos, adding more aileron
and rudder to the slip doesn't change your ground track, it just causes a greater yaw displacement.
I wish we could get back to the real world of slips and x-wind ops and forget this type of "side slip" where from coordinated flight you enter a slip without changing your heading. Again, I don't know anyone who does this in the course of normal operations. Yeah, the drill is just a drill. Let's try to talk about real world, typical ops.
When you go from a crab to a slip, all you're doing is yawing the nose for a smoother landing.
You don't change your track. The aileron into the wind is NOT causing the airplane to "compensate for the x-wind". It's simply preventing the airplane from turning in the direction of the rudder used to align the nose. If you just skid with rudder, the airplane will move that way, wind or no wind. If you think the aileron is what's compensating for the x-wind, then using rudder alone (no aileron) in an effort to go from a crab to aligned with the runway should cause you to ONLY drift....not change heading. But if you do nothing but yaw the airplane with rudder, the airplane will start a constant TURN toward the downwind edge of the runway, and it will continue.
All the aileron is doing when going from a crab to a slip is balancing the horizontal turning force of the rudder with the horizontal turning force of the ailerons. Until we recognize this, this conversation will theoretically spin in circles for eternity.
PS: I believe you once said that if you are in a crab, tracking the runway in a LEFT x-wind, that if you enter a slip with
right aileron and left rudder that you will drift off track, right of the runway centerline.
Do you still believe this? I'm not talking about a slipping turn. I'm talking about a slip where the rudder and aileron forces are balanced. Normal constant flight path slip.
