Thanks for the replies. I'm not too daunted by the idea of learning to fly taildraggers - it should be a good challenge and will undoubtedly improve my general flying all round.
kabz,
Yes, I guess shimmy would be a potential problem, but you could build in quite a lot of damping without affecting the effectiveness of the system - and bear in mind, full castoring main gear has already been used, I wasn't making that up!
Thinking about it some more, an even simpler solution would be to have fixed main gear but with, say, 5 degrees of toe-in. That would achieve the same thing, although I guess it would only be suitable on grass - you wouldn't want your tyres being scrubbed away every time you landed on tarmac...
Miserlou,
Yes, I'm quite keen to get involved in the Tiger Club. There's an article about G-ACDC (the oldest Tiger Moth still flying, 70 years old!) in this month's Pilot which has definitely whetted my appetite. The Tiger Moth has been one of my favourite aircraft since my Airfix model, knee-high-to-a-grasshopper days - it's hard to believe I could be only a few months from not only flying one, but being checked out to do so solo!
Having said that, there's now a Stearman available at Manston (my usual haunt) which looks like great fun too, and it's got a big sexy radial...
Roll on summer,
cbl.