Ah ok. In that case I wouldn’t bother with it. If the gap turns out not to be big enough you end up in a very dangerous situation with an unusual attitude in IMC.
I’d just (In the PA28R that I fly) slow the aircraft right down, put out full flap, stand on one rudder and use full aileron in the opposite direction (side slip). You’ll go down at a very steep angle, have plenty of capacity to make it steep by pointing the nose further down (hence the low initial forward speed), and if it all goes horribly wrong and you enter IMC, all you have to do to regain an normal attitude is return the controls to neutral.
dublinpilot wrote:
slow the aircraft right down, put out full flap
And if you lower the gear as well, then you can go down almost vertically in the arrow, no?
Yes indeed. I don’t think you’d actually get too vertical even with the gear, but you would get to around 45 degrees without exceeding flap limiting speed.
The Cessna 172 POH recommends the “hands off yoke” method.
Thanks for the trip report, Vieke!
I was flying the day of your return and the weather was quite challenging, with strong gusty winds and showers.
Flying a long cross country flight VFR in that conditions is possible, but it’s evident that you need to be proficient with instrument flying otherwise it can get hairy very quickly.
