Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - 13:45:33 ET

Slipping.. Which Direction?

School started up again for me yesterday for this semester. An interesting topic was brought up during the lesson... which direction should you slip.

I was always taught to point the ailerons into the wind. That is, if the wind is coming from the right, apply left rudder and right ailerons.

However my teacher suggested that this might be a bad idea. In a Cessna 172, the static port is located on the left side of the plane. Because of such you should always slip to the right (rudder right, ailerons left) so that the static port is pointed into the airflow. The idea being that you want your airspeed indicator to underread rather than overread.

What are your thoughts?

(FWIW, both my "Flight Test Notes" and the Transport Canada Training Manual say to always slip into the wind)

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Training

The accepted standard is to slip into the wind with the understanding that depending on direction of the slip versus wind direction, it can cause ASI errors.

One is expected to extrapolate if the error is high or low ASI readings and adjust, not slip incorrectly to avoid.

I remember being chastised a few times as a student myself for initiating a slip incorrectly.

Additionally, it makes it impossible to transition fro a forward slip to a sideslip for landing if you are slipping away from the wind.

Just my $0.02...

Posted by: Mark on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - 14:26:54