PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Tail dragger 'experience'
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Old 26th Jul 2010, 08:04
  #41 (permalink)  
jxk
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Cilboldentune, Britannia
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Fascinating stuff chaps..

I was fortunate enough to do some training with a chap in Arizona who taught me how to do 'wheel' landings. I too thought that it would not be possible to make wheel landings shorter than three pointers but I was proven wrong. However, it does take a lot of experience to brake hard with the tail still in air. I found it completely contrary to my instinct having all my life flown nose-wheel aircraft; that is, pull back rather than push forward . I was shown how to control the height with the use of power and by holding the same attitude make several touch and goes by increasing and decreasing the power. You also need to be a bit more adaptive with your feet both for keeping the aircraft straight as well as the amount of braking.

Having said this, I still feel more comfortable doing 3 pointers and just need to practice wheelers a bit more, something I wasn't shown or demonstrated on my tail wheel conversion.
There are many articles showing how missionary pilots land using the wheeler technique. There must be a reason why they do this!
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