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Tailwheel endorsement
Well, I finally got my tailwheel endorsement this week, and today was my
first solo tailwheel flight. I took the Decathlon, since I need to practice my landings. With my previous instrcutor I was struggling, in the Citabria, but my acro instructor took care of me and within three lessons I did ten good wheel-landings straight off, so I guess he must be doing something right. The Decathlon is a real fun plane to fly. It's great for acro, much better than the Grob I've been flying until recently. Landing is a bit of a challenge, because the symmetrical wing means that lift drops off very quickly at lower speeds. It hardly floats at all, in fact if you don't keep speed up on final it drops in like a brick. Solo, it has pretty impressive performance. The take off run is over before you know it. On LVK's 5000' runway, I just about managed to get it to pattern altitude before the opposite threshold, using a Vx (58 mph) climb. It's fun. It has been a struggle at times, especially when I was trying to conquer wheel landings with my first instructor. But in the end it's been worth it. John |
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