Tail wheel Flying
 

I have recently completed my first lesson in a taildragger and while I really enjoyed it I am a little disappointed at my performance.
It almost seemed like learning to fly all over again. I found taxing difficult and I just wasn't quick enough using the rudders.

I can't wait to get back in the aircraft for another lesson and get more of a feel for the aircraft.

Any advise or words of encouragement from seasoned taildragger pilots would be appreciated.

I think there's a clue here...

Once you have let this experience sink in your next lesson will feel a lot better. You will know what to expect and begin to build the natural reactions needed. Do you have to think carefully about which foot to use on the brake pedal in your car? No - it has become instinctive with practice....

I fly a tailwheel twin turbine for a living, around 1500 take off and landings a year and still have my moments.

It will get easier with time and you will find it incredibly rewarding flying. Keep an eye on the wind sock and be quick with your feet.

The difference is that with a nosewheel you push the pedal and keep it there until the plane is pointing where you want.
With a a tailwheel you only keep the pedal in long enough to initiate the swing, and then return it to neutral, before putting in opposite rudder in anticipation of stopping the swing at the desired point.

I'm no expert but taking this on board and using short sharp inputs rather than the longer ones I had been used to in nosewheel planes got me through my tailwheel endorsement. It took about an hour of circuits to alter my behavior and then it all started to come together.

Flying a tail wheel airplane is no where as difficult as many pilots make it out to be.

It is all about recognizing yaw and controlling it before it starts to become a problem controlling it.

When I teach pilots how to fly tail wheel airplanes I make sure they can control it on the ground at all speeds from slow taxi to high speed runs down the runway with the tail in the air.

When they are comfortable with direction control on the ground we go flying.

Tail wheel twin turbine? Struggling to think what that might be.:confused:

What a/c are you learning in? Sometimes the a/c handling characteristics can get in the way of making progress.

I was lucky in having docile ground handling to cut my teeth on which helped build confidence.

Stick at it - it will come good.

SGC

Turbine Dakota?

Basler Turbo Conversions - Home

G

Maybe this?

McKinnon G-21G Turbo Goose (ZK-ERX) Aircraft Pictures & Photos - AirTeamImages.com

It was one of the more demanding machines I flew for a living.

But it really performed with those PT6's compared to the piston engine Goose.

..... a splendid murmuration of multi hued Dorniers beloved by their pax and wheeled on with both elan and panache.

Rob

Can you give us a link to the machine you speaketh of Rob? :)

Very kind of you Rob. :)

I started flying a 180hp tail dragger 4 years ago, apart from the initial 10 hour insurance mandated instruction check out, the rest of my learning is self taught with lots of reading books like The Compleat Taildragger, Stick and Rudder etc. I now have about 300 hours in it.

The main points I think are as follows:
Anticipating use of the rudder.i.e don't wait till the arse starts swinging for you to get on the rudder pedals

If the wind is blowing from the right on takeoff don't assume the left turning tendencies like torque when the tail comes up will cancel out the need for a proper cross wind take off technique. Get full right aileron in and reduce it as speed picks up, if not you will find yourself skipping down the runway which is hard on then gear and if the wind is strong enough you will be heading for the bushes off the side of the runway.

When taxiing in confined spaces allow momentum to build before trying to turn, then use frequent short stabs on the brakes to get it turning which saves revving the !!!! out of it.

In the initial stages of learning to land, if your gonna bollox up the 3 pointer it's better to let the tail wheel contact the ground first then the mains, if you keep letting the mains touchdown first it then forces the tail down which increases your angle of attack and the whole thing balloons back up and your left 10ft above the ground in a pregnant pause on the edge of a stall.

If you get caught in a situation where the landing is pushing up against the planes or your own personal cross wind limits, land it at an angle across the runway, most runways are wide enough to allow you to shave 10 or 20 degrees of the crosswind and in a small 2 or 4 seater TD they will pull up before you run up off the tar and onto the grass on the upwind side of the runway. And don't pay any heed to what the spectators say, your the PIC and it's your safety.

All the talk about you have to be some kind of expert or super pilot to fly a TD is nonsense, just treat every Takeoff and landing with full concentration (as you should with any plane regardless of type) and think thru what the wind is doing and the config needed to combat and/or use it to your advantage.

And finally I am sure you've heard this before, you ain't done obsessing about wind direction till it's in the hangar.

Every day is a school day !

Tailwheel landings
 

Hi Logie101,

I did the whole of my PPL on tail-wheel aircraft (or 'conventional undercarriage' as we called it then,) from scratch. (Anyone flying nose-wheel then was considered posh).

One thing I clearly remember my instructor saying to me was that even when I had completed my PPL course, I should expect that only about three of my landings in every ten would really be any good.

So in the early stages post PPL I should not be dispirited if I found myself frequently doing go-rounds and making a second attempt. It would require some post qualifying experience before I would be able to land tidily first attempt.

Good luck Logie101; keep at it.

BP.

I'm probably gonna get slaughtered for this but here goes,

I have never done a go around in my (admittedly low time) 300 TD hours due to a botched landing, even though I have had plenty of them, I find it's easier to just recover and use power and attitude to set myself up to try again without the need for another spin round the pattern.

I have done plenty go a arounds due to bad estimations of height and distance but they are usually commenced above 100 ft AGL.

Logie 101

When you aren't in the airplane, push the shopping cart backwards in the supermarket. You'll get the hang of it. :ok:

Logie 101,
I had around about 500hrs on gliders, and 150 hrs on nose wheel aircraft when
I converted to a chipmunk. Took around 4 hours on grass.
Have over a 1000 hrs now on a Pawnee and Grob 109, and still hate landing
on a hard runway.
You will get to grips with it shortly, and will never stop learning.

As with successful cornering on a motorcycle, you have to 'Look Deep'. Look as far ahead as you can and soon you'll get your 'eye in' and wonder what all the fuss was about.

logie101:

When you don't get the hang of it, have another lesson. Then a nother. Then one more, and perhaps just one more.

Sooner or later, you will get the hang of it. Every other tailwheel pilot has gone through the same learning cycle, and it gives them (and you) a new skill to add to your pilots pot of skills.

Well done for your first lesson!

Russ.

You a meatbomber guy?

I occasional fly a 100hp PA18-95

Are you on tarmac or grass? I know the cub really prefers the grass as it doesn’t hurt it footsies as much. In fact if you walk past the cub while it’s sleeping in the hangar you may it see it dreaming of flying through the trees and landing on riverbeds, beaches and farmers fields, that where it really wants to be. If I win the lottery I may buy one and release it back into the wild.

Give it a few lessons and it gets to know you and it will behave a whole lot better, always have to watch it as it will occasionally remind you to remember where you are.

As for getting flying advice on technique such as rudder pressure etc. from the internet you have to make sure it can’t sense you are using internet sourced tips. This cub is 3x as old as the internet, it thinks it’s just a fad, it may starting trying to flick its tail in protest

Think this is the turbo-twin....

http://i.planepictures.net/115/85/1343247409.jpg

One of the fleet.....

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...p/34b12218.jpg

Coming up on 300 hours tailwheel here, varying from G109b and Thruster at one end, to Mk.26 and Stinson at the other.

And last week did my first take-off from a hard runway in a Rollason Condor, didn't use enough rudder, early enough, and scared myself mildly as I nearly went off the side of the runway.

As you say, you never stop learning.

G

Thanks for all the encouragement and advice.

I can relate to a lot of the comments made regarding use of the rudder. At the minute I am just not anticipating how much rudder to use.

I am keen to get back into the aircraft and hopefully start getting a better feel for the aircraft. I will have to learn to move my feet a bit quicker!

With time and experience it will come as a natural 'feel' for the aircraft. Until then, keep an eye on the slip ball, if one is fitted, and do not be afraid to practice with rudder input. Only by seeing what it does to the flying characteristic of the aircraft, can you get confident in using the rudder confidently.

Remember my first take off in my YAK 50, having come off the 52. As you unlock the tailwheel, lots, and lots of rudder (LEFT), to keep the thing straight on the runway. Thankfully, you do not stay on the runway for long:)

Two golden rules on using rudder to keep straight - especially in the latter stages of the landing roll when rudder authority is low (low airspeed, blanked rudder by fuselage):

1) ANTICIPATE! (Look deep. Use far peripheral vision if no view over the nose).

2) DO NOT OVER CONTROL! (You'll be correcting your own corrections!).

Might sound 'easier said than done', but believe me it will soon be natural!

Something to be aware of: There are various types of tail-wheels fitted to tail-draggers and they need to be set up correctly. It wasn't until I owned such an aircraft that I realised that there was quite an art to setting them up correctly!
It's worth spending a bit of time during pre- flight making sure that the tail-wheel is working properly. Look at the differences say between: Chipmunk, Robin DR 220, Piper Cub, Yak etc..

Good point jxk. Also, on the more technical side of it, also ensure your feet reach the rudder pedals.

We were arriving one fine day, in a lovely open cockpit bi-plane, me flying from the back, owner in front. 'I have' came the shout from the front, as we went over the boundary fence. I gave it to him instantly. We touched down, ground looped, straight into the field at the side of the runway.

It all went by in a strange slow motion effect. WTF, I shouted as we came to a halt. He had not adjusted the rudder pedal length in the front cockpit, and his feet could not give enough purchase to grapple with the crosswind, that sent us ground looping.

Sky God Pride hurt, pretty embarrassed, but that's tail draggers for you......

I don't know if I would blame that one on taildraggers.

No,exactly, but he has about 25000, TT, and I had a mere 850, on tail draggers, and between us managed to stick it in the fence.

Not the planes fault at all..

Best of it we had to get a lift back in a 182, with the instructor asking us, how did you manage that then?

Closest I ever came in 35 years taildragging to scratching an aeroplane (actually, writing off a lovely L4 Cub and possibly us as well) was when I gave the landing to a multi-thousand hour professional pilot who had no significant tailwheel experience.

Suffice to say that to this day I don't know how that wing tip didn't dig into the runway and cartwheel us as I grabbed it back - later than I should have done.

I sure learned a lot about flying from that.

Well I had a birds eye view of that very wingtip scraping and bending into the runway, and thinking, I wonder if it would cartwheel? It did not.

The after analysis, should I have reacted and grabbed it back off him. I decided not to, and went along for the ride. We had a policy of....if I don't like it I will take, and if you don't like it, same...

We had been Cub flying all morning, prior to going for lunch in this thing, and that was into a 300 mtr grass strip, large trees either end. All very satisfying. Smug over confidence and complacency abound..

All good useful comments from everyone.

I don't know if the OP has driven a (rear-steer) forklift before but I always reckoned the groundwork part of flying a taildragger was much akin to trying to keep a turbo'd forklift straight at 50mph over a bumpy field....

Thinking more on this I wonder if in fact there may be some advantage to be had if one picked up an old forky, took the pointy end mechanicals off, converted it to pedal steer and used it as a 'ground based tailwheel simulator'. Given a cheap forky over here could be got for £500 - £1500 it could be a go - would need side mounted training wheels tho' methinks :}

FP.

First_Principal

Borrow a shopping cart from a homeless person and push it backwards. Same concept, good price, and the homeless person will feel valuable. :ok:

Wax on. Wax off.

Desert185,

Maybe in your neck of the woods, but don't try that in the UK! For some completely unfathomable reason, shopping carts in the UK are equipped with four castoring wheels and are impossible to steer!

This ludicrous design has even made it to the airports. I remember struggling with 60 Kg of luggage on a cart going down a zig-zag ramp at Gatwick. The newly-arrived American passengers faced with the same control problem, were loudly commenting on the stupidity of the design.

Didn't they make an Auster once with three castering wheels. It was supposed to overcome the problem of crosswind landings.


The answer was there all the time. Simples!

We don't have crosswind gear on our shopping carts here in the colonies...but then we have indoor markets and more than our share of bad drivers...i.e. dumb down the carts.

Hi logie101

I read whatever I could get and watched the videos, which was helpful, but only by flying with a good instructor did I start to "get it".

I found joining a group flying a permit tailwheel the cheapest way to more economically develop the skills, which are of course, still developing!

I find this on almost every very different type I fly, but it gradually comes with time and is very rewarding.

Yes, but I think it created more problems than it solved.
It was the Goodyear self-aligning wheels on the 1949 Autocrat

I used to fly a DC3 with crosswind landing gear, it worked very good and allowed us to touch down crabbed into wind and roll out crabbed into wind.

They finally went back to a normal landing gear because of the extra weight of the crosswind gear.