[Rant Warning] Tailwheel Training

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