[Rant Warning] Tailwheel Training

On 19 May 2004 19:40:12 GMT, (Teacherjh)
wrote:

Interestingly, in NY (at least when I got my licence, %& years ago) if you took
the test in an automatic, you were legal in a manual. However, if you took the
test in a manual, you were restricted to a manual transmission.

Are you sure about this? New Hampshire had the same rule about
automatic transmissions: you got a restricted license. Only if you
took the test in a stick-shift car were you legal in any car.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org

On Wed, 19 May 2004 13:36:54 -0400,
wrote:

Not all taildraggers are landed with the tail low either: The P-51
Mustang was often wheeled on,

The only three-point landings I make in the Cub are the mistakes.

A stall-down landing is how I recover from a botched wheelie.
(Generally it's easier than going around

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org

On Wed, 19 May 2004 07:36:44 -0700, "C J Campbell"
wrote:

No, but the 170 is a taildragger.

From what I read, the Centurion descended upon the 170.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org

"C J Campbell" wrote in
message

You have just convinced me that flying taildraggers not only does not make
you a better pilot, it makes you worse to the point of being destructive.
The Cessna 172 was not meant to be landed like a tailwheel aircraft.
Attempts to do that are both dangerous and wasteful.


CJ,

I am sorry you feel this way. As a teacher, you are denying yourself a
really fun learning experience that you can pass on to your students. Having
a tailwheel endorsement opens up your horizons. I know it did mine. It's
just like having a HP endorsement or complex rating. It allows you to learn
a little more about flying than you knew before, and let's one experience
more of the aircraft available out there. I have been checked out in a
Citabria, every Luscombe model except a D, a C-170, a Hatz and of course, a
Cub. Later I moved on to the C-195. I have learned some thing from each and
every airplane, as well as each and every instructor who checked me out in
them.

I also fly tricycle-geared airplanes. I owned a C-172C and put 600 hours on
it. The yoke must be pulled back in many of these earlier models in order
not to land flat. Experience would teach you this. And for what it's worth,
my husband is an A&P and he can vouch that more repairs are made on the
*nose gears* of Cessnas than any other parts. I've flown a C-150 (just an
hour), the C-182 (just 2 hours) and a Hawk XP with instructors, but my love
is classic airplanes with conventional gears. What I've learned flying these
airplanes all over the country has enriched my flying experience, and has
shown me that there's a difference between driving the dang thang and flying
with artistry.

Personally, I think the manufacturer probably has a better idea of how the
airplane should be flown than a bunch of Usenet know-it-alls. You pitch
for
airspeed, not for position of the yoke. If you can't control your
airspeed,
you have serious problems.

Again, lack of well rounded experience is evident in this statement. If you
have light tailwheel airplane experience, you would know that the pilot
*must* control the airspeed to land safely. The tailwheel was never a
problem for me. I had to learn to land a butterfly ;-). Remember too, that
we don't typically have flaps. Luckily, my instructor insisted that I become
proficient in no flap landings in the C-172. That good primary training
carried over into my Luscombe training.

Not only that, I am increasingly disturbed by tailwheel pilots' obsession
with landing as the only measure of the quality of a pilot. It really
tells
me something -- like, they don't know how to do anything else. I hope you
will excuse me now. It is obvious that I have disturbed a bunch of
religious
fanatics.

This sounds like the whinings of my six-year old. But there is a grain of
truth here. We are fanatics. I am part of a very active brotherhood and
sisterhood of pilots who find joy in flying their airplanes. To me, there is
nothing better than flying with the window open and hearing that 65 hp
Continental sing. For just a little while, I'm completely free, and God's
glorious earth is spread out just for me and my pleasure.

Personally, I don't think any kind of extra training will help some
instructors and their students. Those who teach that landing faster is
better and then ram the nose into the pavement will just ground loop our
glorious birds. I'd hate to lose a good airplane to another fool.

Deb
A very dangerous taildragger pilot

--
1946 Luscombe 8A (His)
1948 Luscombe 8E (Hers)
1954 Cessna 195B, restoring (Ours)
Jasper, Ga. (JZP)

However, if you took the
test in a manual, you were
restricted to a manual transmission.

Are you sure about this?


Yes, I'm sure. Because it seemed so backward it made an impression. (I took
the test in an automatic).

Jose

--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

wrote in message . ..
On 18 May 2004 18:09:20 -0700, (Dan
Thomas) wrote:

Oh, man. Have you never flown a Champ or Cub or some other older
design that had lots of adverse yaw, and that might flick over into a
spin if you skidded it around the base-to-final turn? One that
required some serious attention in most maneuvers if you were going to
gain any proficiency in it at all? Even if it's rigged perfectly?
These older designs make the pilot aware of his need for precision,
and once he learns it his flying of all other aircraft improves
enormously.

You sure about that? Adverse yaw has nothing to do with being a
taildragger, it's the ailerons causing that. Put tricycle landing
gear on it and it would still fly the same, requiring just as much
rudder as when it was a taildragger.

Corky Scott

I know that. I'm a CFI too. As I said somewhere earlier, the
taildraggers tend to be older designs that don't have the pussycat
behavior of newer types, which tend to be trikes.
The taildragger's big contribution is forcing the student to use
lots of appropriate rudder in takeoff and landing. Our trike students
quickly realize that their feet are going to have to learn new skills
for departing and arriving, and those skills translate into greater
precision on the rest of the flight.
I made up a term for the disease that afflicts tricycle pilots:
Somnopedosis. It means "sleepy feet." No trike pilot realizes how lazy
his feet are until he gets into a taildragger. I have a friend who
flies bizjets all over the world for a living. One of his colleagues,
a 6000-hour jet jock, would laugh at the taildragger training stuff.
My friend, who also has many hours in a 185, took this fella for some
dual in the 185. After an hour the guy had his "tail between his
legs," as my friend put it, and made no more noises about the value of
tailwheel training.
It's akin to the guy who thinks he could handle a helicopter
because he understands all the physics and controls behind it, like
me. Until, like me, he spends a few minutes trying to hover the darn
thing. I wish I could afford to master the diabolical machine. I have
the greatest respect for the guys who can artfully maneuver those
things.

Dan

"Henry and Debbie McFarland" wrote in message
link.net...
"C J Campbell" wrote in
message

You have just convinced me that flying taildraggers not only does not
make
you a better pilot, it makes you worse to the point of being
destructive.
The Cessna 172 was not meant to be landed like a tailwheel aircraft.
Attempts to do that are both dangerous and wasteful.


CJ,

I am sorry you feel this way. As a teacher, you are denying yourself a
really fun learning experience that you can pass on to your students.
Having
a tailwheel endorsement opens up your horizons.

As I said originally, this is the reason to get a tailwheel endorsement.
Saying it makes you a 'better' pilot, however, is silly.


I also fly tricycle-geared airplanes. I owned a C-172C and put 600 hours
on
it. The yoke must be pulled back in many of these earlier models in order
not to land flat.

Which is my point exactly. You cannot generalize from one aircraft to
another how airplanes should be flown. If you cannot land a C-172S like a
C-172C, then why would you expect everyone to land both planes as if they
were Piper Cubs?

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 May 2004 13:21:03 -0500, "Bill Denton"
wrote:

I think it's probably a safe bet that most of the ardent advocates of
tailwheel training drive cars and trucks with automatic transmissions.

Well, I'm not an ardent advocate, though I did learn in a taildragger
and I continue to fly one.

And I have always driven a standard transmission.

Elitist bigot! :~)

(Stuck with Auto Trans due to a wife with three left feet)

On Thu, 20 May 2004 12:37:43 GMT, "Henry and Debbie McFarland"
wrote:

To me, there is
nothing better than flying with the window open and hearing that 65 hp
Continental sing.

65 hp Continental sing? I always thought they chugged. BIG GRIN

That reminds me, went to a Waco fly-in at an airfield somewhere south
of Dayton Ohio back around '91 or 2. There was an early vintage Waco
there (two of them actually) that were powered by OX-5's. I hung out
right next to them to hear what those V8's sounded like.

When the one I was about 10 feet away from was propped, I was
flabbergasted: it sounded exactly like "depocket depocket depocket"

When it "revved up" for takeoff, the sound changed to: "DEPOCKET
DEPOCKET DEPOCKET" and it leisurely bumped down the runway and gently
lifted off.

Rent the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and you'll have the sound
exactly.

Corky Scott

On 20 May 2004 07:17:17 -0700, (Dan
Thomas) wrote:

I made up a term for the disease that afflicts tricycle pilots:
Somnopedosis. It means "sleepy feet." No trike pilot realizes how lazy
his feet are until he gets into a taildragger. I have a friend who
flies bizjets all over the world for a living. One of his colleagues,
a 6000-hour jet jock, would laugh at the taildragger training stuff.
My friend, who also has many hours in a 185, took this fella for some
dual in the 185. After an hour the guy had his "tail between his
legs," as my friend put it, and made no more noises about the value of
tailwheel training.

I understand, I really do. But I actually do use the rudder pedals in
the 172. I have to use them during crosswind takeoff's and during
normal takeoffs, to hold the nose straight while climbing, to hold the
nose straight while descending and also to get the airplane straight
when reaching for the runway. The only time I'm not putting pressure
on the rudder pedals for some sort of flight direction correction, is
during cruise in calm winds. Coincidentally, you don't need to apply
rudder in taildraggers at that point either.

I understand that in addition to that, taildragger pilots need to be
sharply aware of wind while taxiing. "Ya got ta fly it till it's tied
down", is something I've heard for 30 years. On the other hand, I was
trained to pay attention to the wind while taxiing the 172 too. I
also understand that because the weight of the airplane is behind the
main wheels, taildraggers would very much like to swap ends during
rollout, should the pilot be so kind as to let it.

I have a friend who owns a taildragger and he really HATES landing it
on paved runways because it's just much more sensitive to input on
those kinds of surfaces. Give him a grass field which is much more
forgiving, and he's happy.

Corky Scott