hmmm...700+ dragging the little wheel...mostly 185s bushflying.
"With little need of rudder for five seconds...'
I think she just 'got away' from you a bit...with experience you'll tend to anticipate a little more. As you decelerate you will need to keep that wing down and use brake and power sometimes to increase the rudder effectiveness..little jabs/spurts of windflow not great roaring forward thrust.
Me? Never groundlooped landing....but twice on takeoff.
Taking off once from a mountain strip the seat slid back a few notches and I had to slide way down just to reach the peddle...by which time we had swerved a fair way off course and all I could see out the side was the embankment running along one side...didn't have the reach for the required braking so dragged the aircraft into the air and staggered over the embankment with the stall warning blaring...wonderfull aeroplane the 185.
On another occasion I had a brake line burst landing at a very high mountain strip with an elevated threshold and a 30 degree bend before the slope went from a few % up to about 25% with a transverse slope of about 4%...reverse camber. about 400m long, 19m wide with 4 foot deep rain trenches down each side...and as an aside a very cute little bridge into the parking bay.
Now it was the left brake that failed but the strip turned right on landing but slopped off to the left
I rolled right up the top and stopped the aircraft across at the top. Unloaded the pax and thought about the departure. I had a new trainee along, 1 week in the country
He was all for staying but it was late in the day and I did not fancy a night in this village 7000' above sea level.
Oh I nearly forgot...a strong quartering tailwind from the right for takeoff...can we see where this is heading...I kinda needed that left brake.
Two attempts from the top, one gently rolling tail down to use the tailwheel steering and one with full power immediately for rudder control ended up in grandaddy groundloops before the tail ending up swinging back downhill with full power arresting our backward roll down the hill and got us back onto the top of the strip
Both at low forward speed I might add...but still plenty of 'wind up effect'.
All to the wild amusement of the assembled natives.
So I shut down and called the villages up to the top and we rolled the aircraft down to the 'flat bit' at the bottom...100m ending in a verticle drop of several thousand feet into a gorge...Ya shoulda seen the look on the newbies face when I said "Inya get where off!!!"
To be fair dropping off elevated thresholds was commonplace when dragging full loads out of very high but virually flat strips...just the newbie didn't know that and I wasn't about to spoil the effect for him
When we got home I three pointed and stopped on the hard surface home runway without trouble...took Scott a few beers to see the funny side of it.
Like I said...wonderfull aeroplane the 185...looked after me through my misspent youthfull stupidity stage...as did the Islander and Twin Otter in late years
Chuck.
PS Bare in mind I was flying 12-15 sectors a day in the 185 in and out of wet, muddy, steep, flat, curved, rough mountain strips and this was near the end of my full time career on type, although I owned one for a while years later....to say I knew the old girl well was an understatement...even 18 years later I have the deepest respect for taildraggers in general and the mighty 185 in particular. That 'respect' never diminished and only relaxed when the aircraft was stopped, shutdown and chocked