Tailwheel training
Hi B737DUDE,
Beware! There is a surprising amount of poor tail-wheel training on offer out there. In fact I suggest it would not be a bad idea first of all to read 'The Compleat Taildragger Pilot' by Plourde.
My greatest area of concern is that many flying schools/flying clubs nowadays don't teach roller landings. You might well need this skill to pull off a cross wind landing in a strong cross wind. (Some places don't even teach cross wind landing at all)!
For landing cross wind, they will teach you to do a two-point landing instead. This is where you stall the aircraft on putting down your into-wind main wheel and tail wheel first. This is O.K. for a mild to moderate crosswind in a high wing aircraft, but if you have to land a low wing monoplane or bi-plane with a crosswind close to the crosswind limit for your aeroplane, then in my view two pointing it is hazardous.
I learned to fly forty years ago at a time when we were all tail dragger pilots. (You had to be posh to fly a tricycle in those days). My instructor was a man who had flown heavy, multi-engined taildraggers, (while carrying several tons of high explosive) during much of WW2, so I tend to regard him as a considerable expert on the taildragger and still regard what he taught as best practice.
He taught me to do both methods of approach, the crabbing approach and the wing down method. He said that I should be able to do both and be ready to use either method, according to the characteristics of the aeroplane and the conditions prevailing.
One thing, however, never varied. He taught me to do roller (a.k.a. wheeler landings) whenever doing a cross wind landing. This is where you allow the main wheels to brush the runway while you still have flying speed. You then move the control column forward to remove any positive angle of attack and cause the aeroplane to roll along the runway on her main wheels and keeping her tail up.
You allow the speed to fall off while holding the tail up and the aeroplane as close as possible to the centre line of the runway. As the speed falls off, you find yourself moving the control column further and further forward to keep the tail up, while applying more and more into wind aileron and more and more away-from-wind rudder to keep her staight. Eventually, you would be unable to hold the tail up any longer and it would sink onto the runway and the aeroplane would roll to a halt in a very short distance with the flying controls now very crossed - stick forward with aileron into wind and rudder away from wind.
Recently, when I made a return to flying (after a break of forty years!) after getting my PPL back I decided to get my taildragger skills back also. Obviously, I now had to re-learn cross wind landings, I was taught the method of stalling the aeroplane on putting down the into-wind main wheel and the tail wheel first, (a method which incidentally I had never even seen before). I asked if I could relearn my accustomed roller landing, and received no clear reply. So I did as I was told and used the method I had now been taught. A few weeks later, I had my very first ever groundloop!
I am not saying the sole cause of the groundloop was 'two pointing' the aeroplane, as other factors were at work on that occasion also, not least of which being a gust of wind funnelled between two nearby hangars, but I certainly believe the two point landing method contributed to the development of the groundloop by removing some of the rudder authority as with the tail down part of the fin would have been masked by the forward fuselage and the aircraft was now in a landing attitude.
I believe that if that gust had caught me during a roller landing, while my nose was still level it would have been that much quicker, after getting full power back on, to accelerate to flying speed, and do a go-round.
I have the impression that many modern instructors, (both ex military and civil trained) lack the ability to teach the roller landing, perhaps being afraid to teach people to brush the ground with their mains, while still having flying speed, and to push the stick forward during the resulting ground roll for fear of grounding the prop.
Whoever you go to, make sure you are trained properly. You need to come away feeling confident about landing cross wind and using a roller landing.
BP.