I'm a wannabe pilot, so I don't know beans about the technicalities you
discussed. But I know an honest man willing to describe his own mistakes
and learn from them, and I both respect and applaud your candor here.
Thanks, and fair winds to you. (I DO know a bit about sailing, and fair
winds I suspect are appreciated by fliers, too.)

Cheers,

Dick Behan



"Reid & Julie Baldwin" wrote in message
...
I have heard it said that there are two types of tailwheel pilots: those
that have ground looped and those that will. A week ago, I graduated from
the latter category into the former category. There was no shirt ripping
ceremony for this milestone. Fortunately, there was also no torn flesh or
bent metal. I post the story here so others can share my lessons learned.

The background: My Piper PA-16 Clipper has been down since April for an
engine overhaul (a story in itself). I had flown the plane about three
hours since the overhaul, including four landings, all into a strong wind
directly down the runway. I took some advice to change my landing
technique and carry some power through the flare instead of cutting power
as soon as I had the runway made. This had worked pretty well for those
four landings. I needed to fly the airplane to an airport near my parent's
in order to store it in my father's hangar for the winter. That airport
has an East/West runway, and we had been having strong Southerly winds
lately, so I waited for a day with more favorable winds to make the trip.
Finally, the winds were 15 mph from the west, so I went for it. The
airport has a 2600 ft asphalt runway with obstuctions at each end. My
usual airstrip is 1800 ft with obstructions, so I didn't consider the
runway marginal. My 9 yr old son wanted to come along since he hadn't had
a chance to fly with me all year.

The sequence: The ceiling was lowering as we got closer. It wasn't quite
bad enough to turn around, but I was glad to get to the destination. Some
of my worst landings have come with the "glad to finally be here" mindset,
which should have been a warning. I didn't get slowed to pattern airspeed
until downwind leg. On final, I noticed I was about 10 mph faster than
target and made a mental note to get the speed down. About the same time,
I noticed that I had a significant crab angle indicating a crosswind from
the left. I focused my attention on setting up a slip to correct for the
crosswind. I made a wheel landing close to the intended spot, left wheel
first. So far, so good. I focused my attention on keeping it pointed
straight and waited to start braking until my right wheel came down, which
seemed to take longer than expected. I also decided that I needed to get
the tailwheel down so I would have tailwheel steering to help with the
crosswind. When I started to brake, the plane got squirelly in a hurry.
Some dancing on the pedals kept it on the pavement. Suddenly, I realized
that I might not have space to get stopped before the end of the runway.
Just off that end of the runway is a busy road. I decided to take my
chances with the weeds off the left side of the runway. I picked a spot
between two runway lights and headed for the side. It turned much sharper
than I would have chosen and I ended up going between a different set of
runway lights than planned. As I slowed down in the weeds, I gave it some
throttle to avoid coming to a stop and steered back onto the runway.

My son thought the whole thing was pretty cool and loves to tell everyone
we know all about it. I hated to end my flying season with a landing like
that, but there was no way I was going around the pattern until I had a
chance to thoroughly inspect for any damage. The only things I found out
of place were some weeds in places that weeds don't grow.

This wasn't the usual "loss of directional control" ground loop scenario,
although directional control was marginal at points. I classify it as a
ground loop because once I started toward the edge of the runway, the turn
accelerated on its own. When I replay the sequence in my head, I don't
have any trouble coming up with a list of mistakes I made along the way:
1) I should have anticipated the crosswind and not been surprised by it on
final. The wind was 250 at 15mph which is not exactly west. Runway 29 is
not exactly west either. Put those together and there is a pretty good
crosswind component. I had computed the crosswind component with wishful
thinking as opposed to trigonometry.
2) Obviously, airspeed control was an issue. I wasn't at pattern speed
before entering the pattern and I never quite caught up. After I noticed
the speed was high on final, I got distracted by the crosswind and didn't
get it corrected.
3) Did I pull the power to idle after touchdown? I don't specifically
remember doing that. It is such an automatic thing that I might not
specifically remember it. The fact that the plane did not slow down like
it usually would makes me suspicious that I was still carrying some power.
Since I had to jockey the throttle around to get out of the weeds, I
couldn't look at the tach afterwards to tell.
4) I didn't recognize the potential for an overrun in time to make a
go-around. Once I touched down at the correct point and knew the runway
was long enough, I presumed I was ok. Since it was a wheel landing,
touching down did not imply normal touchdown speed. I was too focused on
directional control to notice the speed issue in a timely manner.

This incident reminds me of the trouble I had with crosswind landings as a
student pilot. I never screwed up the crosswind correction itself, but it
seemed to distract me from something else and I would botch the landing
some other way.

The only thing I have found to pat myself on the back for is the fact that
I never allowed myself to become a passenger. I kept flying the airplane
until I got it stopped on the runway (facing the wrong way and with a load
of weeds, but on the runway).