Flying Wild Alaska

I was watching a TV episode of "Flying Wild Alaska" and the pilot of what looked to be a Cessna 172 was talking about taking off in a 30 mph cross wind. There are many pilots in the lower 48 states that wouldn't normally consider doing this because of the danger of crashing on takeoff. But, I suppose it is sort of realizing how much flying in a small plane is in some ways sort of like sailing a boat on the ocean. As soon as the pilot lifted off the ground he "Crabbed" into the wind immediately. by facing into the wind it then becomes your headwind and gives you lift in an even way (hopefully) across both your wings so if it isn't gusting (variable) too much you then have an even increased lift over both your wings. This will stabilize the plane even at very slow speeds over the ground because the wind is adding 30 mph of air to your lift over and under your wings. So, even though you are "Crabbed into the wind in this way you still will tend to follow the runway until you get high enough to make sure your takeoff has been successful enough to continue flying to wherever you want to go.

The first time I had to take off in a 20 mph cross wind I was about 20 years old in 1968. And though at age 8 I had been allowed to pilot (after takeoff) a Piper tri-pacer over Santa Fe, New Mexico for about an hour, and then to fly from Palm Springs to Los Angeles in a 1949 Stinson at age 12 while crabbing into the wind to prevent being blown into San Gorgonio Mountain to the North of us at over 11,000 feet, and even though I had flown a glider after the tow plane had released us when I was 18, I hadn't taken off a plane before. And that the instructor who was a fighter pilot out of War II had nerves of steel from all that didn't really help me in the way that I wanted during that flight.

So, as a 20 year old  in 1968 I didn't know about taking off crabbing into the wind like in the Flying Wild Alaska episode, so I tried to take off in a 20 mph cross wind like everything was normal. So, what happened to me was after I almost buried one wing into the runway a couple of times because of the uneven  cross wind wing effects on takeoff, the instructor corrected us to flying into the crosswind after we left the ground and gave the control back to me which looked a lot like the Flying Wild Alaska episode on TV. So, at this point I was a little unnerved from almost burying the wing and the pilot almost having let me to that to the point where I sort of wondered, "Who is this guy I'm flying with anyway?" I realized soon that he was another adrenaline junky who loved danger. And even though in those days at age 20 I was sort of there too, maybe the instructor was more there than I was "at least in regard to flying" and was going to try to scare me. He didn't fully succeed until he started to demonstrate stalling which is to fly up at such an angle of attack with the wings that you literally fall out of the sky from no lift under the wings. Then you fall backwards and down and hopefully the nose falls so you can get forward momentum and lift under the wings once again. A "normal Stall" is falling about 1000 feet before recovering. If you continue without recovering beyond  1000 feet it can be very difficult or jarring in many ways to recover from a stall beyond falling 2000 feet for example. And it greatly depends upon the airplane and how much weight you are carrying whether the wings will stay on or not if you fall more than 3000 feet in a stall. However, this is a completely different story if you are in a wing reinforced stunt plane that is designed to do this for shows.

Note: Crabbing into the wind means that instead of heading in the direction that you want to go with the plane, you are instead directly or somewhat directly heading the plane into the wind which causes the plane to go in the direction you actually want to go but looks funny because you are then sort of flying sideways. This prevents you from being blown off course at altitude by the winds  and during takeoff or landing can be very scary as you leave the ground or land because the lift is different on each of your wings at takeoff or landing points because of the cross wind (wind going sideways across the airport).

2nd note: The problem with the instructor doing stalls to impress me with what I had to learn before I could be a pilot was that I was then ready to throw up from falling out of the sky in stalls several times and being pretty scared at that point. So, I told him that I didn't want to throw up in the plane so we landed so I could throw up on the runway. This didn't take away my love for flying but it did give me new respect for all pilots which was likely what the ex-world war II fighter ace wanted to do in the first place.