Pitts - what's the catch?
 

So why are Pitts Special's so cheap? A friend of mine said he saw one the other day for £20k. Thats Cesspit money. And I'm staring at an ad for an S1S with only 65 airframe hours on sale for £30k. There must be a catch surely?

By the way, I've stood on so many airfields and heard people muttering 'They are impossible to land'.....'you can't see anything'....etc...etc.... I hear this as 'I'm not confident about my flying abilities' but maybe I'm wrong. Do Pitts actually deserve their reputation? Would someone who's spent 12 years flying taildraggers (Admittedly of the unpowered type!) and perfectly happy to sideslip till the cows come home find it difficult to convert?

Not cheap, just very reasonable! I guess that the ones that you are referring to are single seat. Although the Pitts product range is not as extensive as say Piper or Cessna's, there are 5 or 6 single seat variants and those lower powered with fewer ailerons do go for substantially less.

Obviously they are not impossible to land and no, you don't need to be a Sky-God to fly one. With the right training anyone could be taught. With your experience I see no reason why after a couple of circuits in a 2-holer, you'd not be ready.

Justiciar, who is away presently is making great progress.

Stik

As Stik says, you don't need to be a Sky-God to fly one. :p

Is it worth mentioning the approach speed? 87 kts? or something like that. High compared to a spamcan.

There are many different types of Pitts S1.

Neither of the two you mention is 'cheap' if the particular specification and circumstances of the aeroplanes are taken into account. I think I know the machines you mention and if so they strike me as being sensible asking prices.

They are not impossible to land at all and anyone with tailwheel experience should convert quite quickly. The reputation comes from the fact that they land faster than a cub pilot say, is used to and below about 50 they need more attention with the feet than some other aeroplanes. Also helps to keep the stick in the right place during roll out.

Stop staring at the adverts, and get your cheque-book out.......

I'm currently converting Justiciar in his Eagle and we are turning final (power off) at 100mph, holding it at that speed until above the numbers, then he is alowed to raise the nose and commence the flare.
The approach speed is just a number but it seems to cause a psychological trauma: what a hundred miles an hour - that's fast! Our last landing was wind<5kts, a whole hundred miles an hour and we were down and stopped in 180m.
Great aeroplanes!!

:eek: They are the most fun per buck you will find in aviation!

So there isn't a catch then? Blimey......I need to buy one now before everyone realises!

Oh, but there is a catch, just like crack cocaine has a catch!! Once you try a Pitts, you'll be hooked like a crack addict - and will have the bank balance to match!!

But, oh, what an addiction!!!

Pitts2112

In my experience it's not the horizontal speed that causes trauma, it's the VERTICAL speed. Power off, the Pitts comes down at about 2500 ft/min (that's about the MAXIMUM descent rate I can get in my 182 in a full emergency descent). The ground comes up FAST and it's very hard not to over-react to that. Eventually the last couple of seconds of flight starts to seem reasonable and you can think about things, but in my experience it takes a while to get to that point.

So yes, the Pitts *is* hard to land. Not impossible, but it takes an excellent instructor and a lot of practice. Unless you're Chuck Yeager (except maybe a bit younger) you won't pick it up by going a dozen times round the pattern. It will a good few hours and quite a few dozen landings.

Flying the Pitts is a wonderful experience. But of course it is ONLY an aerobatic plane. It is a TERRIBLE cross-country tourer! With full tanks it can fly for a little over an hour, and it's pretty uncomfortable. So it all depends on what you want it for.

n5296s

I've got to disagree with n5296s on a couple of points. I think he's overcooked a couple of points and underestimated a couple.

Depending on how much tailwheel time you already have, it is quite possible to get the hang of landing the Pitts in a couple of hours. Of course, it depends on what you've been doing with the tailwheel. If you spend a lot of time in the circuit and are comfortable with a variety of approaches and landing conditions, you might be able convert in less time than you might expect. I had about 150 hours tailwheel, much of it in the circuit, did an hour and a half in an S-2, then soloed my S-1D.

Also, the Pitts has about 2 hours' endurance, unless you're blatting around at full power. My S-1 is typical and uses about 45 liters/hour at aerobatic power (mostly full chat) and only about 33 liters/hour in the cruise. In a cross-country you can do legs of about an hour and a half and still have plenty of reserve. That'll give you about 150 nm in real terms.

While it's not a real tourer, I've done 4 trips with the Pitts Artistes into Europe. OK, it's not voluminous, and you don't really want to be doing more than an hour and a half without a cup of tea, but it's imminently workable as a day, VFR cross-country machine. At a cruise of 120 kts, you can get to decent places in reasonable time. Can't carry a whole lot, but to get to a display or competition, or link up with some mates for a weekend away, it's more than up to the task.

I'm based at Popham. Since you're in West Sussex, you might as well stop on by for a cup of tea and a chat about the realities of Pitts ownership. There are a few of us there who are more than willing to tell you what we can to help recruit another to the crowd!

Pitts2112

I think the S1D is the optimum Pitts for contest work today. There is little point in an S1S since almost everyone thinks they should have a monoplane for advanced.

Flat-bottomed wing? - you're having a laugh, surely. Or on acid.

At Advanced, the S1 suffers at international levels because of the size - recent events have shown this isn't necessarily a problem at national level (S1 drivers screwing up the paperwork, and flying a different Free to the one judges are expecting...now *that* is a problem :) ).

As said, the reason they are so cheap is because they are single seat - if you want cheap then look at some of the PFA single seaters that are not serious aero machines, many going for £4-5000.:ok:

Is it worth mentioning the approach speed? 87 kts? or something like that. High compared to a spamcan.

Don't know anything about Pitts, but I have flown a PA32 with an approach speed of 90kias, so 87 doesn't strike me as making this a 'hot ship', although others have mentioned factors, e.g. sink rate, that would be unusual for a spamcan driver.

I was able to land an S2A reliably in a couple hours time. By the end of my 10 or so hours of acro training we went to the big airport and did crosswind landings on hardtop. I could do it, but could tell I needed more time to be good at it. I did not find the S2A to be nearly as easy or forgiving as a cub or a pawnee. The visibility is worse, you need to use periphial vision a lot more. It was wonderful to fly. The airplane did whatever you told it to.

I think the single seat pitts are cheap for a few reasons:

Single seat - not much utility
Low demand - it isn't for everybody

It's not much airplane - at least in terms of materials. The Pitts was one of the original cheap homebuilts. Because of its small size, less 4130 and wood than a bigger biplane, which makes it lest costly to build. Because it's mission is acro, they tend not to be loaded up with a lot of junk on the panel. Junk = weight, weight is bad. The junk on the panel also = money, so the simple panel accounts for part of the low cost.

Whether or not a flat bottom pitts is any good for competition, I have had a few pitts owners/builders sing the praises of the flat bottom pitts. For a recreational guy like me, they say an S1S would not offer a huge advantage. And, they tend to be cheaper. Completely suitable for sportsman.

I have my glider for sale. When it goes, I've got some buddies who are interested in forming a partnership in a 2-seater. Probably an eagle instead of a pitts. You pay a lot more for that second seat.

-- IFMU

It's not so much the speed (per se) as the speed at which things appear to happen. I rarely have time to look at the ASI - usually a quick couple of glances as I turn in from downwind (180 degrees continuous turn) and get established on the right descent path, then one more on short (very short) finals. The 2500' sink rate, coupled with the speed and the poor forward visibility, mean that everything seems to happen fairly quickly. And the short-coupled fuselage and bungee main gear mean that if your speed is a little fast, or the flare a little high, there's a good prospect of a bounce.

Like all aircraft, a good landing starts with a good approach, which starts with a good circuit, and a 1000' circuit in my S-2C takes around 2:20 mins, which means that you're constantly getting baulked by Cessna 150s flying 5 mile downwind legs.

None of the above puts the Pitts beyond the reach of an average pilot, as much as we Pitts pilots like to pretend otherwise. You just need a good instructor and plenty of practice to get used to the picture and get the brain used to processing things at the right speed. In that sense, it's a bit like the first few hours of PPL ab initio training, all over again. But it's great fun and provides a challenge that never really goes away.

Well yes, gliders are taildraggers and can be groundlooped, but it's a whole new ballgame from the moment you start the engine and have to taxi the beast.

No Ed, not on acid nor having a laugh. Only one S1 flew advanced this year and that was yours. Not a very standard airframe or engine I think you will agree.

Of course a standard S1S can be flown at advanced level and I had been intending to do so myself last year until my plans were changed for me. However most people at that level move out of Pitts into monoplanes. That was the the basis of my remark.

At standard and intermediate levels there is more to be gained from the flat bottom wing than from the round wing. That is what I mean.