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Old 27th Oct 2012, 00:57
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Old Akro
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Melbourne
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A Citabria / Decathlon you can pretty much see over the nose. It also has a reasonably long fuselage, which makes it more stable on the ground. It has a fair size cross section, so its draggy and therefore relatively stable in speed. It's undercart is also reasonably compliant and it has a lot of ground to wingtip clearance.


By comparison, a Pitts has limited forward visibility - even in level flight. On final or taxying the "blind spot" would be possibly a 120 degree degree arc. It lands possibly 20 knots faster than a Decathlon, has very stiff undercart (especially the spring steel undercart mod), short fueselage and limited ground to wingtip clearance. Especially in a single seat Pitts you cannot relax at all until the thing is in the hangar.

The cub / supercub is even easier than a decathlon. A J3 cub with a final approach speed of about 40 knots allows a fair bit of time to sort things out. A Pitts is over the fence at maybe 80 knots, so you've got to be on top of the game.

A tiger has about as good forward visibility as a Pitts, except you can look down beside the fuselage more easily and use that as reference. And its slow and progressive with a lot of feedback in the controls. Its a joy. Taxying a Tiger is probably hardest. Followed by a cub or early Citabria with heel brakes. The Pitts is easy to taxi, its just unstable. If it gets away from you it goes pear shaped in a heart beat. Literally.
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