Most frightening taildragger award goes to the Taylorcraft F21-B that I flew in 1996. Short coupled, cramped little mongrel with dodgy brakes. Never, ever..............
Also got to do a short flight in a Stinson 108, which felt a bit like the infamous Texas Taildragger - not enough height in the gear legs to allow a good speed reduction before 3-pointing it.
Speaking of the Texas TD - did several hours in one which had a real mind of it's own - later to discover that the gear legs had been installed so as to allow both the mainwheels to track away/outwards from the aircraft axis. Toe-in didn't change this. The safe option was taken, and it was changed back to a tricycle.
The worst thing with the Texas TD was that this one sat too 'flat', and didn't allow you to stall it on - in the 3-point attitude before it touched down. Tailwheel hit 1st if you really tried to hold off.......that gave an interesting arrival ! Understand that the original, and best, conversion was by Bolen, and included vertical extensions to the legs so it sat higher. Would have taken a lot longer to overcome the drag of that attitude using 100HP though.
Maxter mentioned the Maule M5 and M7-235 types earlier on. Yes they were in need of some aft weight. Then again, so's a Cessna 182 when flown 1 up - probably half of the 182 nosewheel/firewall bingles can be traced back to insufficient elevator input/command on landing. Nothing that 20L water in the cargo compartment won't fix.
Tailwheel training - Low or High HP?
Thought I'd pose the question here about why a preference for one or the other. The lower HP Cubs are probably better trainers than the later Supercubs because they take longer to get the tail up, longer to accelerate, and so need much longerduration of directional control input = good for learning.
As Chuck,and othershave described earlier, having plenty of grunt, as in C180/185's, might get you airborne sooner, but the downside is that the swing is significant.....often beyond the ab initio student to handle. So, not so good for initial learning of t/w handling. As well, it's a steep learning curve to tackle a 180/185 without having some 'heavier' Cessna single time first, eg C182, 205, 206,207, 210.
Makes you wonder who in the old DCA thought up the endorsement grouping of C180/182/185 that they had back in the 60's !!
happy days,