Thread: Skidding turns
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Old February 19th 08, 04:33 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
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Default Skidding turns

Yesterday on a short sight-seeing x-cntry I noticed the following
flight characteristic of a 1975 C150: whenever I turned to the left,
especially with low power setting, the ball indicated a skid with no
bottom rudder at all.

Explanations I've seen usually are illustrating the danger of skidding
a turn onto final, at high AoA, the typical scenario being tightening
a turn to not overshoot the runway. The inside wing and the rudder are
pointing toward the ground. The ball indicates skid. The pilot gives
more back pressure -- that's where you can get into big trouble.

But I noticed a substantial ball deflection indicating skid with
neutral rudder (shallow turn, not anywhere near critical AoA, by the
way).

In a left turn it seemed to me to take a fair bit of top rudder to
keep the ball centered. That seems weird to me. It doesn't happen in
the 152 or 172 I fly so I'm wondering if other people have seen this
in 150s (or other aircraft) or maybe the ball indicator has a problem?

I remember during my checkride in the same aircraft the ball showed
substantial skid on a demo approach the DE was doing after I had
passed the checkride. He saw it too and corrected, but the plane's
behavior seemed to catch him off guard as well.