Some tailwheel questions/comments

"BDS" wrote in
:

"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote

Never flown a Husky, but what you learned in the cub will get you
into anyting else with relative ease if you've absorbed what the cub
taught you.

It's still teaching me as I continue to work on perfecting my
technique. After a couple thousand hours in tricycle gear airplanes,
I'm finding that just going around the pattern chasing that painted-on
3-pointer is more fun than I could have imagined. Who would have
thought that this little 1940's vintage 85HP airplane with no
electrical system could be so challenging and so much fun?!


Yep. Best thing is it never really grows old. It's still one of the most
satisfying things to do in an airplane as far as I'm concerned.
Heaven is slipping over the fence in a biplane and settling onto freshly
cut grass...



You've learned to get the stick back to the stop during rollout ,
hopefully.(actualy, in a cub you have to have it there as you touch
down or you end up porpoising down the runway, eh? ) If you weren't
attentive to the rudder you ended up going backwards. What else do
you need to know? It teaches you what your feet are for and makes
you look like an idiot if you don't!

I have to smile reading this. I'm flying from a grass strip that's
less than smooth in spots and I was getting lazy holding the stick all
the way back on the stop during the rollout. Finally, my instructor
turns around and laughingly says to me "You're gonna lose it one of
these times if you keep letting the stick bounce like that." That
cured me of that little bad habit right then and there.

Yeah, you have to do that it petty much al talidraggers after they're
down.

Even a Pitts isn't such a big step up if you have mastered a cub (as
opposed to having jus survived a few hours in a Cub)

I'm no longer just surviving but I also know I haven't quite mastered
it yet.

Well, it takes time is all. Once you're off and sort of wobbling along
on your own the real learning begins, eh?

I still haven't flown a better training airplane.

The best part is that my wife absolutely loves flying in the thing,
especially with the door and window open. What a blast!



Excellent. Enjoy yourself.

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.
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?

Bertie