The hobbldy hoy nature of the ground handling

[Schwarzfeld]

Well, as Yo-Yo said, Erich Brunotte clearly stated he preferred not to lock the tailwheel.

He flew in that era, you know. ;)

 

Secondly he said he never used brakes on take off, except for getting RPM up on particularly short fields.

 

Then I bet you dollars to donuts Herr Brunotte was a pro at getting that Unicycle of Death up on the mains right the **** away as soon as possible so that the thing was more controllable on take off; having a loose tailwheel on the ground just makes your balancing act even harder.

 

Concur on the brakes for takeoff - as I understand it thats kind of an all-around no-no for obvious reasons but as I learned doing short-field practice out of Mina's airfield in DCS 2.0 (I've been there in person, its... its not at all like DCS renders it, lol, its just a strip of sand with tires marking the "runway") and I did find myself using right toe to keep it straight while rapidly throttling up to make wheels up before I ran outta runway.

 

Unrelated sidebar: At the REAL Mina Nevada airfield, you could run long into the sand and take all day to take off, but eventually you'd run into some trailers, a ghost town fulla meth heads, then a highway, and more or less in that order...

[David OC]

Quick video I shot landing and taking off using an exterior view

 

u3rRmZ8Dizk

 

Almost too much excessive side loading when putting her down:(

 

Found a good article that was Printed in Sports Aviation, April 1992

 

TAMING THE TAILDRAGGER PILOT - Download the PDF HERE

 

Preview below...

 

Whether Cub or Pitts, the concept remains the same – do not try to bring the nose back to the

centerline with the first application of rudder. To do so means you just played the opening chord on doing

the two step tango again, because your right foot is going to wind up chasing your left foot and vice versa.

We hate to harp on this, but remember – first stop the nose in the direction it’s headed, bring it

parallel with the centerline, and then bring it back to the centerline if so desired. Each of these movements

is done with quick little jabs of the rudder unless the nose is really going off in one direction or the other

and then it’s done with quick big jabs of the rudder.

 

Trying to teach (or learn) tailwheel footwork takes much longer if it is all done while shooting

landings. On a landing everything happens a bit too fast to really soak up what’s happening plus the

student only gets to see it once on each approach. It’s far better to start at one end of the runway and bring

the power up just enough that the tail comes off the ground, and just drive back and forth from one end of

the runway to the other, practicing what we have just been preaching.

 

Another one I found, "What's Different About Taildraggers?" - Download the PDF HERE

Preview below...

 

Finesse, coordination and accuracy have to be forced upon the nosewheel student by a dedicated

instructor because most nosewheel airplanes just don't require those qualities to be flown safely. In

a nosewheel airplane, the instructor is the single most important ingredient in teaching the student

to fly properly because the airplane has made it easy to simply get up and down.

 

 

And then there's the tailwheel airplane, the lowly Cub/Champ/Citabria/etc.. Here the instructor is

also important, but in the tailwheel airplane he doesn't have to work as hard to teach the basics

because the student quickly learns the airplane simply won't go where he wants it to unless he or

she masters things like coordination and attitude control. The very basic skills on which all of

aviation is built, coordination, speed control, attitude and directional control are absolutely

necessary to keep the airplane from becoming a crumpled ball of fabric and tubing on the side of

the runway.

Edited January 15, 2017 by David OC

[Anatoli-Kagari9]

Very good David! Thx for sharing!!!!

[Yo-Yo]

And, by the way, the basics of such kind of steering someday will save your money or life when driving a car... If the car gets unstable on iced road. :-)

[Schwarzfeld]

And, by the way, the basics of such kind of steering someday will save your money or life when driving a car... If the car gets unstable on iced road. :-)

 

^ What he said, myself being a semi-reformed street racer from California. Really enjoyed those little 2.0T rear wheel rice rockets but when you crank 400whp out of em, you better learn that smooth inputs technique with your feet AND hands or you end up sliding off the side of Pacific Coast Highway into some rich dude's pool real quick.

 

My CFI in the Cub hugely disagreed with the run up and down the strip with the tail up thing, he drilled me shooting landings from the first hour, but everyone's different, students and CFIs, there's a type of each for the other that will be compatible.

 

Absolutely right about the quick jabs and stopping the nose before you line it up in a single hit.

 

One takeoff I made that was particularly jabby, my CFI said "So, you're a street fighter, I'm a pro boxer, you hit with hard fast jabs really quickly, I dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee... which one of us is gonna eventually win that fight?"

 

He used to tell me "Its the same principle as learning to shoot [a handgun] - slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Once you learn to do it slowly [stopping the nose, then gradually feeding inputs with returned movements to straighten it] then you can learn to do it quickly, but it's not something I can teach you to do - you gotta figure it out on your own while I'm here to catch you before you kill us."

[David OC]

This was good paragraph that I found helpful. TAMING THE TAILDRAGGER PILOT

Download the PDF HERE

 

“As the airplane settles on the ground, certainly one of the most common tendencies of new tailwheel pilots is to look out one side of the airplane or the other. In fact, most pilots look out the left side. Unfortunately, that tends to bias their field of vision, making it difficult for them to judge quickly enough whether they are rolling straight or not. Again, depending on the airplane, on of the most useful techniques is to look straight ahead, picking up the sides of the runway in the peripheral vision, so both sides are actually being seen at one time.”

 

 

I was also reading somewhere about the take-off run and how the engine is pulling the aircraft from the front which helps in the stability.

 

Now if you think about the landing and pulling back the throttle the momentum and weight of the plane is pushing the plane along when slowing, this makes it way more unstable and much easier and quicker to ground loop.

 

The bowl analogy that he uses

is a good one too; tricycle gear aircraft is a bowl with the ball in side (positive stability) and the ball will return to the middle when pushed around.

 

A Taildragger is the bowl upside down (negative stability) and you are balancing the ball on the bottom of the bowl with your rudder pedals, once it goes too far to one side you no longer can bring the ball back to center of the bowl. (ground loop)

 

And, by the way, the basics of such kind of steering someday will save your money or life when driving a car... If the car gets unstable on iced road. :-)

 

Continuing with Yo-Yo’s car hooning sideways rally driving experiences on ice. Landing a taildragger would be like driving a car in reverse quite fast, that would be fun! Try not to oversteer to much, whatever you do!

Edited January 16, 2017 by David OC