Tailwheel difference check ride
 

Hello,

I'm looking to do a tailwheel difference course around the london area.. can any one recommend a instructor with access to a tailwheel aircraft to get me though the difference course!

Thanks

Genghis might have a thought....

Well I'd be glad to do it, except that my taildragger is on a private category CofA so I can't do instruction on it (unless you're interested in a share in a very nice vintage 4-seat taildragger based at Booker, in which case the syndicate I belong to gets a new member, which we could do with, and I'll do your conversion for free).

Or if you're buying an aeroplane or an aeroplane share anyway, buy it, and get a suitably qualified freelance instructor *cough* to do your conversion in what you'll be flying.

On a more commercial basis, look at

(1) Airways Flying Club at Booker (Chipmunk) or,
(2) West London Aero Club at White Waltham (Piper Cub), or
(3) Pilot Centre at Denham (Citabria).

All three are nice airfields with well looked after aeroplanes and a choice of well regarded instructors. All are within half an hour's drive of Heathrow. Nothing much to choose between them to be honest.

G

If you want to come to the Midlands I have a couple of suitably legal taildraggers that I can give the training in. If interested drop me a PM.

Douglas Gilmour also runs a nice course in his Super Decathlon in Perth. Lovely plane and great instructor. Tailwheel flying is great fun, once you've gone over you wont go back :)

Perth??? The Midlands is considered a bit of a stretch from the London area, but Perth? You get mauled by Polar bears up there and who would want to do a tailwheel course in the dark?
:p:p

If you're going that far, you'd be better doing it with India-Mike at EGPK. At-least he has Chipmunks, and you can get a cheap flight there from Stansted.

G

You could try CUBAIR at Redhill. Friendly little club. I'm not plugging it other than I used to fly there myself.

Not sure if you call this an anagram
 

[quoteDan the weegie Douglas Gilmour also runs a nice course in his Super Decathlon in Perth][/quote]

[quotebose-x Perth??? The Midlands is considered a bit of a stretch from the London area, but Perth? You get mauled by Polar bears up there][/quote]

But Doug Gilmour is going to be instructing me at Perth in my Maule


:D It is the small things in life that make me chuckle

See your pm's.

Regards,

GS

"...it's the wee little wheel under the tail...
congratulations, nice working with you..."

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.

I work for Cubair at Redhill - we do differences training in our SuperCub and we have a number of keen and experienced tailwheel instructors available.
.......and me:)

Broomstick has some very valid points. I fly a heavy multi engine turbine tailwheel for a living with somewhere in the region of 5,000 tailwheel landings so am hopefully qualified to give some input....

The Plourde book as a greg source of information and one I point all my students at. When training make sure your instructor teaches you all the methods for landing, not just the one that suits them! Every tailwheel aircraft has different quirks, our SET tailwheels we tend to three point, the Multi engine is wheeled on and we balance reverse thrust against forward push in order not to slam the tail down. My Auster was virtually impossible to wheel on as the tail was so heavy, yet the Chippie is a much nicer beast when wheeled on.

Just remember, there is more than one way to skin a cat!!

Having trained power in J3C for PPL after gliding, I concur with the necessity to know wheeler.
When the wheeler becomes one wheeler before slowing down, I'm still not that great, but that's for other reasons. In those circumstances, if having to land (ie wind picked up after take off and not expected), I'd not hazard full stall with one mail wheel up.

I also find it harder to do three pointer in tarmac/concrete compared to grass.
In light tailhweel like old Cubs, it's not as easy to do full stall 3 point landing, compared to wheeler, too. I need to get some tailwheel currency. Super Cub and Citabria should do this summer. :)

Hi Broomstick!
I agree with most of what you've written, but permit me a couple of comments:

• "roller" is used by some for a T&G - AFAIK wheel landing is the normal term for flying the (tailwheel) aircraft on in the flying attitude
• wheel landings typically lead to a longer and undocumented landing distance so need to be used with care (cue links to Alaskans landing on mountain peaks)
• holding the tail up until it drops can lead to a surprise (and aeroplane surprises are usually not a good thing :eek:) so it's far better to lower it while you retain control, possibly having first turned more into wind at low groundspeed and while the tail is up (this assumes the crosswind is outside max demo and there is space available)
• the aircraft is not usually stalled when landing in the three (or two) point attitude, nor is it necessarily correct to land with the stick on the backstop. Correct technique is to set and hold the landing attitude (the same one you saw before starting the take-off!) and after landing to gradually move the stick rearward and into wind as the speed decreases

Another excellent book is "Think like a bird" - a great read and contains several useful tips.



HFD