DAVE MATHENY
BETTER PILOT / LIGHT FLIGHT
The Art of the
Crosswind Takeoff
How not to get run off the road
THE WINTER DAY WAS a luminous gray under high ceilings, and almost
windless. My wife and I had flown in to a grand feast provided by a
friend at his lakeside home. Always generous, he had arranged for a
3,000-foot runway to be plowed on the lake ice near his home in
Minnesota. Quite a few guests had flown in. We had been there most
of the day, but now came the reckoning. Time to leave if we were to
get back to our unlit home airstrip before dark.
A pilot who had just landed said the wind
had come up and gone into the south—a
direct crosswind for the east-west runway—
and had increased to 10 mph, gusting to 15. It
was definitely a factor for his landing. And
just as much of one for my coming takeoff.
Fortunately, the Ercoupe I was flying had
been modified so that its twin rudders were
connected to actual rudder pedals, unlike
the standard Ercoupe. The original had its
rudders and ailerons interconnected so that
all turns were automatically coordinated.
This was a feature that designer Fred Weick
and other aviation heavyweights of the 1930s
and ’40s thought would increase safety by
reducing the number of stall-spin accidents
that have always plagued aviation. They
