"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote

One piece of advice I can give that's useful to new talidragger pilots,
or at least I've found it so, is to get religious about aving the
controls in the right position when taxiing in wind. Any wind at all.
Even three knots. For one thing, having the ailerons in particualr,
plcaed correctly, you increase your control of the airplane
dramatically. Being in the habit of doing this wil give you the edge you
need it during crosswind landings. It's habits that come to the
forefront when your brain degenerates to it's primevel state when things
start happening quickly.

Good advice. It's easy to get complacent about control positioning while
taxiing, and I know what you mean about the difference in control when
they're in the right position. You can definitely feel the difference.

BTW, when taxiing with a tailwind you need to reverse, as yo know. Don't
forget to consider the taxi speed of your airplane in relation to the
wind. Elevators are tricky in this situation. If you got a roaring
tailwind, you need to have them forward (Careful with the power here or
you could have an instant headwind as far as your elevators are
concerned) It can be hard to tell if you need the elevators up or down
when you're taxing downwind, but th erule I use is if you can feel the
stick "click" as the wind passes ovr the elavotrs as you move them up
and down you should have them down. Make sense?

I'll have to try that rule of thumb next time but it sounds like what you're
saying is that if you can feel the wind pushing on the elevator as it moves
through neutral then it should be down. I've been taxiing with the elevator
full forward in all tailwind conditions up to this point, and that's
probably not a good habit to get into, especially when moving into something
with more power.

BDS