So, your correspondent got shipped off for to stand behind a marvelous piece of gear that will bring the global information grid to the E-2C Hawkeye. On account of there weren’t any government servants available and a contractor would have to do. In a pinch. Walked into the San Diego Convention Center, saw all the high tech gadgets on display, saw all the beautiful young things with perfect smiles standing behind them and realized that someone had made a terrible mistake choosing me to represent.
From a purely marketing point of view.
All the time watching the clock. On account of the lesson I had set up down at Brown Field with an eager young man of inordinate height, who once had made his living flying regional jets but who now, on account certain instabilities in the commercial aviation market, teaches elderly retirees accustomed to tricycle landing gear how to fly an Aeronca Champ if only for the drama that’s in it.
Brown is a bit of a trip back through time. An old military field a mile north of our southern border – I’m assured, it’s hard to tell – it’s a mixture of corrugated aluminum and World War II era wood. Walking up to the FBO, I saw ghosts. Young men grown old in a changed world, a world they do not deign to recognize. Their eyes turn inward to the wooden walls, or upward to the skies. Their ears echo to the sound of booted flight students treading the boards. Nothing else besides remains.
The airplane is a wee, sma’ machine with a 65HP Continental at the front end. No flaps. Hand started. Mags off, three or four cycles of the prop, mags on, breaks on (yer man pulls on the spinner to make sure he’s not being deceived), another crank or two and the lawnmower rumbles to life.
Not exactly AFCEA on the inside, either.
Not exactly a six-pack stack. The RPM gauge runs backwards, like. Which gave us a bit of a start when we throttled back and saw the needle swinging the wrong way. A bit of gentle back and forth on the taxiway. Run-up checks at the hold short. The stick held firmly aft the whole while. Because she wants to get away from you, she wants to dance a merry dance.
The take-off was not so very much. Stick aft until the tail got light, then a bit of a bunt to let it off. A few moments later we were airborne, the (very light) crosswind weathercocking the machine. A climbing right-hand departure to the north, flying towards Jamul. As much right rudder as you’d like, watching a very light westerly breeze push you sideways.
It’s a small machine that manages to feel large on the inside. The coordination ball mostly stays inside the stripes, but finds its way at random intervals out to left or right for no perceptible reason. Turns seemingly in its own length with a little bit of assistance from the rudder. The very idea of an overshooting approach seems fantastic, incomprehensible.
Turns shallow and steep. A power-off stall series that whispered no urgent premonitions, that had no real buffet. We went from level to gently nose down, a bit of wing rock. Is this the stall, I asked.
It is.
Back to the field, report the unfamiliar VFR checkpoints, entered base for the first approach. Which wasn’t awful, although I was forced to angle to final. That whole turn radius thing. Came in flat, a little power on. Rounded out to land, felt the instructor following on the flight controls program full aft stick as the wheels touched down. Rolled for a bit before running the engine up again. Airborne.
A slightly steeper approach on the second pass. Sideslipped down to burn the altitude. Flared a bit too soon and ended up settling down in a fairly high rate of descent. Seemed less to flare than merely rotate around it’s lateral axis with the rate of descent pretty much unchanged. Landed moderately hard. Got an injection of humility, not my first.
The third approach was the worst. Set up well, but during the flare the tail hit first and bounced the nose down. Some mad impulse made of 4500 hours of tricycle landing gear made me put the stick forward to match our attitude. Which was precisely the wrong thing to do.
With the CG aft of the main landing gear and the tailwheel off the deck the machine chiefly yearned to swap ends, the gyroscopic effect kicking in. Brisk rudder work to keep her tracking more or less down the centerline. A moment of real concern. Stick aft, stick aft my instructor said. Stick aft.
Airborne again and fully focused. This was new.
The fourth approach and landing was not so bad. The fifth was creditable (although hardly a squeaker).
That’ll come, maybe. I’ll be back.
We parked the machine, and saw another lesson:
Got to put the rollers down, dad.
Looks pretty much like an E-2 cockpit.
Well, in the old days, at least.
What a lovely old aeroplane. She does what she needs to and nothing more.
Touch and goes in a taildragger are a complete waste. It’s the time between you are out of flying speed and the time you are at taxi speed when things will go south. There’s a good reason the FAA doesn’t count taildragger touch and goes for currency purposes. One of the few rules they got right.
Not so much gyroscopic effect with an engine that size. Inertia works both ways, usually agin’ you, when the CG is behind the mains. Plenty of people manage a ground loop with the engine at idle. Great job avoiding that.
Lex,
Good on ya for getting a TW endorsement. I have about 5 hours plus a checkride yet to finish my PPL. Then I’ll be getting mine it that plane’s younger brother, a 150HP 7GCAA Citabria! Can’t wait, and thanks for the shot of GA in your blog!
I learned how to fly at Oceanside Part 141 Commercial Pilot Certification. Although I have 10 hours in a Super Decathlon I never did really get it down, myself. Strange thing, taildragging. I was a border patrol agent at San Clemente and San Diego. Wanted to be a border patrol pilot, but ended up in the management track, strange thing that too. I often miss Brown Field, ghosts of my own.
http://flickr.com/photos/0321recon/sets/72157594346517381/
Logged some early hours at Brown Field in a Colt back when I was learnin’ P2 stuff over at North Island. Brings back memories… Finished PPL up at Whidbey in a Colt and did the taildragger thing over in Minden a couple of years later. One of the best ways to learn to really stay ahead of a wee light plane, IMHO.
“A few moments later we were airborne…” MOMENTS indeed…
But, to the patient comes satisfaction. Only groundloop I ever, uh, experienced was on a perfectly calm clear quiet Arizona morning: Total self-assurance and complacency followed by a sick “merry-go-round” and…dust. Lotsa dust over on the side of those AZ runways…
It’ll keep ya comin’ back Lex. Enjoy!
I never got used to the damn heel brakes on the champ. Most interesting tail dragger to land well consistantly, the twin Beech SNB. Biggest scare, forget to lock the tailwheel on an A1E.
Oops, Double posted. My bad.
BTW Lex,
I forgot to mention, wait until you start wheel landing the thing :0 I’ve watched maybe a half dozen different people learning in my instructors Citabria. All with many more hours than myself. Wheel landings get them all due to the higher touchdown speed and having to bunt the controls nose-down to stick the mains and keep the tail up. I’m hoping that with the minimum amount of Cessna time required to finish my PPL, I will learn quicker due to less engrained nosewheel sloppy rudder habbits. Maybe.
As mentioned before, I soled in a Champ my father rebuilt and owned when I was a kid in 1972. Your post and pictures bring back memories for sure.
“Our” Champ N2902E (still on the registry!) had an issue with the tailwheel we later discovered. It was a wee bit cocked which made it want to go right (nose hence left). Sorta like the front end out a alignment on a car. It was hardly noticeable at any speed but, owing to the fact the right heel brake didn’t hardly work, when you slowed to walking speeed and no longer had any effective rudder due to lack of wind over the tail, it would, if the pilot allowed the nose to stray the very least bit to the left, begin and end the slowest groundloop in the world and there was nothing you could do to stop it other than, if just fast enough, blast the prop and stomp on the right rudder/brake as hard as you could.
Since the speed was always less than walking when this happened I did a number of these spins to the left with no damage while Instructor in the back fumed about the lack of “damn right brake”.
Once we sorted the thing out after I soled the thing I thought I’d died and gone to heaven it tracked so straight.
I learned about flying taildraggers from that…..
Yeah, Baby! Welcome to the world of classic airplane flying.!
Good for you, Lex!
I learned to fly in a 95-hp Cub and have soloed in several different tail draggers and taught in most of them. The absolute worst wrt to landing (not having flown the D18 twin Beech) was a swept tail Cessna 150 modified to be a tail dragger and powered by a 180-hp engine for glider tow; most of the available rudder had to be used to compensate for P factor in the flare. The most interesting (not in a good way) was a Cessna 180 modified with cross-wind gear that, on its own, would kick out so the aircraft tracked straight down the runway while cocked into the wind. Felt like sliding on ice. The only one to bite me was a Fornier motor-powered glider: not enough rudder control power, one braked wheel under the fuselage.
Oh, and the Champ was probably the easiest to land. Good visibility over the nose and adequate rudder control power. The most manly? A tossup between the Stearman and the T-6.
Judging by the stain under the cowl, that appears to be one of those planes that changes its own oil.
Two things I found most frightening the one time I flew a Champ were hand propping and heel brakes. Once in the air it flew like a, well…, champ.
It seemed like it would be a good platform for photography. Slow, stable, and the flat plexi of the side window would probably not cause the reflections that I get in the RV bubble canopy.
At the time, it rented for $29 per. You don’t see that kind of price much anymore.
Lex, think you need to forgo the tail draggers. Try something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O206cGDny4c&feature=related
Saw this demonstrated last Thursday.
http://www.skyraiderllc.com/main.htm
The Sky Raider Frontier. You only need about $50,000, 400 hours to build it and a two car garage.
Reminded me of a Taylorcraft, except for that whole folding wings thing. The demonstrator was equipped with a Lycoming 0-290, about 130 Horsepower. Could be equipped with a smaller engine to get it into the light sport area.
Not for me, but pretty neat anyway.
Wait. . .so you were three pointing on the 1st day?
That’s weird.
With a wheel landing: you just fly it right on to the runway. Much mo bettah with a cross wind, too.
Lex,
I did my primary aerobatic training in a Champ in 1979 in Merritt Island, Florida!
Spins (Inverted as well) as recal had a full control deflection (ailerons, rudder and elevator) entry, count the turns, keep the cross controls in or it flies out, manage the AOA to keep the nose down and avoid a flat spin, recover on a specific heading and altitude, a couple to the left a couple to the right…..
Wheel landings to a full stop with the tail off the ground…..
My instructor grew up on a cropduster airport in S. Georgia, had a ground level aerobatic waiver and flies B767’s for American, lives about 50 miles outside DFW on an Airpark with his own hangar and grass runway. He an his wife have a hobby, competitive aerobatics….what a life.
Wow. 65hp Champ. One of the first planes I worked on. Paint scheme very similar too.
As for the Cessna RG sudden stoppage: My Airframe instructor at Clover Park VoTech always said, “There’s two types of retractable gear aircraft. Those that have and those that will. Belly in that is. Job security lads. Job security.”
Congratulations on your entry into the “conventional gear” world, Lex! It’s very satisfying to land a taildragger well, especially in windy conditions (after the terror subsides, of course). As I may have posted on here before, I used to own a 1977 C-150 that was converted into a taildragger with 140-style spring-steel gear legs. It was challenging to land (very sensitive to the slightest rudder inputs, and rather tippy laterally), but once I got some proper instruction from some old-timers, flying it was a joy. I miss it.
Good luck with the transition.
Neat!
Now imagine flying it from central California to upstate New York. Best 3 1/2 days of my life up to that point. (Got my (most exceedingly modest) beginning in a ‘46 7AC very like yours.)
Except your panel seems much more complicated.
Ah, the electrics. Ours didn’t have any of that, at all. I guess you really can’t do that so much today, though.
Hope you get signed off soon. I’m jealous.
ahhh, the Champ. Started my primary training in one in with my father in the back seat. He wanted me to truly understand the mechanics of flying, starting from brake release; made me a better pilot because of it. Soloed in 9 hours, if memory serves. That Champ felt like a rocket ship with no back seater!
There’s a few more gauges on your panel than I had — no nonsense distractions and no radio, either; talking doesn’t have anything to do with the stick and rudder. I didn’t appreciate this fact until we moved up to a Citabria to finish the rest of my training. Its radio left me stumbling for the right phrases and then getting distracted from the flying task at hand. Took a couple of hops to really get comfortable again. Learn, adapt, move on to the next item on the syllabus while mastering the previous one…
My instrument instructor would say, “if you’re not sweating, or you can carry on a conversation with me, I’m not pushing you hard enough.” Didn’t stop him from talking almost constantly.
Have fun with this. I hope there’s some Pratt & Whitney time in the works for your weekend gig!
So all of this talk about taildragger certifications over the last year(?) has left me somewhat mystified. I know what a taildragger is, or I can see it in my head (2 wheels in front, 1 at the tail), but I could never figure out why there was a special cert. Based on this post and comments, I have to imagine that landing is the hard part. Especially if you are not used to landing the front wheels first. Would anyone care to fill in the details or at least confirm my supposition of why the FAA requires an extra cert?
Well, as you’ve probably surmised, the CG of a “conventional” landing gear aircraft is aft of the main wheels. That means that (unlike the tricycle gear machines your host grew up flying), the airplane would dearly love to swap ends and let the tail lead the dance. Such a notion is objectionable from the pilot’s perspective, and preventing it from doing so is the constant challenge of taildragging pilot. Especially us jet guys, who have gotten used to using the rudders to park the brakes and not much more (except when at very high angles of attack, in a brawl).
Letting her get away from you is called a “ground loop”, and it’s the bane of the unwary. It might have happened to me on landing number three, if your man hadn’t been in the trunk for to give advice.
Not a huge deal if you’re slow – it can happen at almost any speed – but, with any kind of speed on the machine, especially in a biplane aircraft, you run the risk of dragging a wingtip or sidestressing the landing gear to failure.
It’s fun learning new things.
Congrats! And you didn’t shoot your eye out!
b2
Lex, Thanks for the extra info