My Ground Loop

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).