Side slipping Debonairs?

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Does anyone have experience with side slipping Beechcraft Debonairs?

I was out the other day and had a 7 kt straight across cross-wind. It felt to me like I just could not hold the fuselage aligned with the runway no matter much opposite rudder I gave it. It has a 15 kt crosswind limit and I have landed other planes with a much higher crosswind. It felt strange. Maybe I just need more practice in this ship…

 

[tawood]

Does anyone have experience with side slipping Beechcraft Debonairs?

I was out the other day and had a 7 kt straight across cross-wind. It felt to me like I just could not hold the fuselage aligned with the runway no matter much opposite rudder I gave it. It has a 15 kt crosswind limit and I have landed other planes with a much higher crosswind. It felt strange. Maybe I just need more practice in this ship…

No Debonair experience for me, but...when I upgraded from a Cherokee 140 (which I found absolutely fabulous and completely controllable in a crosswind) to an Arrow I was SHOCKED at the loss of rudder authority in the Arrow (especially since they are pretty much the same body). I think it was a combination of several factors as to the "why" the rudder is less effective. I lost count in my first few months of ownership how many times I pushed the rudder to the stop...hearing the "clunk" of hitting the stop... yet still couldn't get the plane aligned with the runway, even in relatively light crosswinds.
Anyway, I've learned to combat the loss by keeping my speeds AND rpms higher on final. More airflow = more authority (which obviously makes sense).

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Thanks. A very good point I had not thought explicitly about. It turns out those solutions are what I just intuitively did and kept the speed up a bit. Made the runway seem rather short!

I am going up again soon to try the slips with various flap settings at altitude to get a better feeling for this plane.

 

[PilotDave]

I never noticed an issue in the bonanza. Only flew the debonair a handful of times more than two decades ago. Not sure if there were significant differences in the two.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I was up again in it and noticed a very strong difference between the left and rights sides. A hard right slip is weaker in this ship and that is what I needed the other night. Also in the course of testing it I managed to uncover the fuel intake on the lower tank and stop the engine. Got another chance to go through the engine stop in flight procedure - a bit of excitement.