Mix 2 parts wind with closed runway, add in clouds, stir well.

Today I had probably the most eventful flight up here so far. I had to head an hour south to pick up the Chief's wife and daughter and bring them back up.

There was a cold front just south of the field travelling southbound, which brought 1200 ft ceilings, rain, and surface winds around 7 knots. It was raining lightly when I got out to the airport, so I threw my coat hood up, fueled the airplane and did my walk around. I also took out the seats I didn't need and stuffed them into the cab of the pickup. Usually we throw them in the back, or leave them by the tie-downs on the ground, but I didn't want them to get soaking wet in the rain. The flight south was fairly uneventful, it stopped raining about 15-20 minutes into the flight and the clouds started to break up and lift, but it was choppy the whole way.

The flight back was where things got interesting. By the time we were on our way back, the cold front had moved south a fair amount, so it wasn't long before we started going through some scattered showers, with the clouds broken to overcast above us at around 6000 ft. I considered attempting to get above the cloud layer and fly VFR on top to stay out of the rain and stay in air that was a little smoother (the Chief's wife is a bit of a nervous flyer and doesn't like rain or bumpy flights), but the clouds looked at least 3000 ft thick, so I decided against it, since the Cherokee doesn't have the gusto to get that high. A little we approached another thin layer of scattered clouds right at our height of 3500 ft. It looked to be only scattered, so I figured it we'd try to get on top of those, I climbed to 4000 and at that altitude we crossed overtop and were just skirting the tops of the lower layer. I wasn't high enough to get a good top-down view to see how many holes there were in the layer below me, but I'd have a pretty good idea after flying overtop of the layer, and if it was any thicker then scattered, I'd just find a hole and squeeze back down.

Unfortunately within 30 seconds the lower layer got much thicker and the layer above us got real low real fast and just like that we were into IMC (Instrument Weather Conditions, aka the soup). Alrighty then, time for a descent. As I was flying further north the clouds must have been getting lower and lower, because I was descending on instruments for what must have been a good 5 minutes and didn't break out of the bottoms of the clouds until 2000 ft (1900 ft AGL).

The rest of the flight until the last 15 minutes was spent humming along at 1500 ft with rain spattering the windshield. Within 20 miles of home I tuned in the AWOS to get the latest winds, which were being reported from the 300 degrees at 16 kts gusting to 21. So I called up the radio service, made my initial report, and advised I'd be landing on runway 32. They called back and told me it was closed, so the active runway was 06. Runways are named to the nearest 10 degrees on the compass heading they are lined up with. Therefore if you're using runway 32 you'll be facing 320 degrees magnetic. If you're using runway 14, that's really the same runway as 32, you're just facing the other way. Runway 06 faces 060 degrees magnetic. Anyways since 32 was closed, that meant that the winds were almost a direct crosswind, which makes things interesting when the winds are 16 kts gusting to 21. The maximum demonstrated crosswind for the Cherokee 6, which is the strongest winds the test pilots landed in when they were developing the airplane, is 17 kts. That means the winds I'm about to land in exceed the test pilot's max by 40%!

Well, here we go!

Normal crosswind landing technique involves banking the airplane into the wind, and then applying opposite rudder until the wheels are lined up straight to the runway. This cross control technique induces what we call a slip, which is basically the airplane flying a little bit sideways. An airplanes maximum crosswind ability is reached when the rudder can't induce a big enough slip to match the sideways motion the crosswind is creating.

The approach was gusty but so far so good, but when I crossed the threshhold and started my flare and slip, the rudder hit the stops well before my nose was straight. I've been in this situation before flying the Twin Comanche (which has a small rudder and so a low crosswind ability) and in those cases I've able to hold the airplane off the ground long enough with a bit of power if I had to, release the rudder input so the nose swings into the wind, and stomp on the rudder again. This causes the nose to swing back around straight with its momentum carrying it beyond what a smooth rudder input can bring it to. Before the nose can swing back on you, you chop the power and get it onto the ground. I'm not sure if this is the best or proper technique (if there is a "proper" technique which I doubt) when landing in a crosswind that exceeds the airplane's abilities, but it works for me.

Anyways in today's case I didn't have a chance to do that, because a split second beforehand, a gust of wind rolled the airplane to the right violently enough that the hand I had on the controls didn't have a good enough grip to hold on, so I took my right hand off the throttle and put both hands on the controls to keep the airplane where I wanted it. If I were to try my Comanche technique I would have had to add a bit of power to keep the airplane from touching down, but before I could grab the throttle again the wheels chirped on the ground. We skidded sideways on the tarmac a short second before I quickly dumped the flaps up (so we didn't go flying again in a gust) and got the airplane under control.

Whew! That's the most excitment I've had on landing in a long time! Man I love my job.

It wasn't until after we got out of the airplane and the Chief pulled up that I noticed my adrenaline pumping. The Chief must've noticed it too, cause he mentioned that I looked scared, and laughed that he used to land in crosswinds like that just for the fun of it. I'm not sure if he said it as sarcasm with the intention of agreeing how rediculous the winds were, or as a way of saying that its "no big deal". I laughed, but my pride resented that comment a little, because I don't like anyone (especially my boss) thinking I don't have the fortitude to do my job.

At any rate I was supposed to have another flight to take some fuel up the coast, but we decided to not push my luck and leave that until tomorrow.