Learning to fly in a taildragger: historical

[Zaibatsu]

Nobody ever told me there was a mystique to tail wheel aircraft. Keep it straight, proper inputs, etc. It was a Chief. I'd equate it to driving RWD vs FWD,, pretty much the same in normal circumstances, but RWD gets a lot more exciting if you mash the throttle in a hard turn.

Only differences was lifting the tail and that I didn't have to nail an attitude like a nose wheel or float plane to keep from digging in. You could fly it on at any speed provided you nailed the round out and checked forward. The Aussies used to do that in the Caribou, but most nose wheel aircraft will be destroyed from such carelessness.

It was only after a pilot I knew ground looped his Maule and I started going through YouTube that I realized tail draggers were so dangerous.

And anyone who says you don't need rudder to fly a nosewheel aircraft has never done a V1 cut with no autofeather.

[Cat Driver]

And anyone who says you don't need rudder to fly a nosewheel aircraft has never done a V1 cut with no autofeather.

Wow that sounds really difficult, can you give us a full description of how to deal with such an event?

[Shiny Side Up]

Regarding instruction back in the day vs today. Maybe it was better, maybe not. But what can certainly be said, is that you can not be complacent in a tail dragger...thus tail wheel instructors must pay more attention to detail and they must teach how to properly fly the aircraft in the cleanest manner from chock to chock.

In my mind the fact that in its first year of production the nose dragger 172 outsold every other then tailwheel model of airplane in the training class speaks volumes. And that was in 1956, in case anyone is keeping track. If the level of instruction was as superb as we keep getting told across the board, the 170 should have stayed in production until today, and the 172 relegated to the curiosity page of aviation history. While the survivors here can say that their instruction was superb, and the environment they trained in was excellent - and there's no reason to doubt that - I do doubt that instruction was that level universally, or maybe even mostly for that matter. It would be like me postulating that everyone is trained excellently based upon my own experiences taking flying lessons and giving them. If my memory narrowed the sample size to that base, then yes it would be true from my point of view. But I know that in the wider world of flight training that is far from the case.

I suspect that instructors over the years have followed the same bell curve that any other segment of the population follows. There are good and bad and every level in between. "Bad" instructors aren't a new development. After all, instruction being a generational thing quality of instruction passing from one to another over the years, theoretically if every instructor was excellent back in the day, which one of them started teaching bad techniques to pass on? Wouldn't that make him/her a "bad" instructor. I know that kind of thought makes people uncomfortable.

I might add, that if I could enter another data point, or rather maybe a load of them, in all my time flying I have yet to encounter a taildragger made before the aviation slump of the 80's that didn't have an accident history, many of them a large one of repaired wing tips, new props and all other assorted other evidence of mishandling, most of this long before I was born. That doesn't say "universal excellent training" to me. But I'm aware how these things get swept under the rug of history. A notable incident when I was shopping for an airplane a while back when I was perusing the logs of an airplane advertised as "accident free history" had a lot of repair entries that I had to ask about. "Well I've never had any major accidents" replied the second owner of the aircraft which he had been flying since 1969.

Many of the old tube and fabric planes have corrosion issues stemming from being welded back together poorly. One spectacular instance was a Cessna that the my pre-purchase guys pointed out how many times in the landing structure it had been re-built that he didn't think it could be rebuilt anymore - too many doublers and over-sized rivets...

You must be well ahead of the aircraft even more so then a nose wheel aircraft...including ground handling. I have faith that regardless of the position of the third wheel, there are instructors out there (instructor rating or not) that teach flying in the cleanest manner possible and teach to be well ahead of the aircraft.

And for that we can be thankful. I get that sometimes it seems that they're in the minority, but I suspect that bad and good instructors tend to congregate in their respective groups. After all, bad instructors will produce more bad instructors, and good instructors should be able to produce or influence more good instructors. Like my Chief pilot said once. "If you fly an airplane really well, no one notices or cares." With more people flying now, and the advent of the internet, its simply easier to see now the product of the bad instructors. I would wager that there were a lot of bad instructing things done "back in the day" that secret never left the grass field it occurred on.

[Old Dog Flying]

The reason that the C172 sold so well in the stone-age was because of the hypr put on it by Cessna's sales department! Who wouldn't want a "modern" all metal airplane with "land-o-matic" landing gear for $9000.00

[fixedpitch]

The reason that the C172 sold so well in the stone-age was because of the hypr put on it by Cessna's sales department! Who wouldn't want a "modern" all metal airplane with "land-o-matic" landing gear for $9000.00

Exactly. The C172 was -- and is -- an engineering marvel. There's a reason there are 45,000 copies of it.

And let's not forget that GA accident rates in 1950s were over twice what they are today despite the alleged superiority of flight instruction in that era. Pilots were trained in tail wheel airplanes in 40 hours or less -- and then died.

[photofly]

What I can say is that stepping out of a 1939 Luscombe into any vintage of 172 is a step-change upwards in luxury and comfort. I'm not surprised that the 172 sold like hot cakes. The easy entry, upright seating and the control yoke is a huge difference over the haul yourself in, knees up to your ears semi-reclining position and stick-between the legs of the older aircraft.

[Big Pistons Forever]

And let's not forget that GA accident rates in 1950s were over twice what they are today despite the alleged superiority of flight instruction in that era. Pilots were trained in tail wheel airplanes in 40 hours or less -- and then died.

Actually the fatal accident rate in the 1950's was almost 4 times higher than the rate today.

[photofly]

Here's an excerpt from "Blind or Instrument flying?" (Revised edition, (c) 1931 by Howard C. Stark, from the golden era of flight instruction.

Screen Shot 2017-06-02 at 8.14.17 PM.jpg (359.78 KiB) Viewed 2389 times

[Cat Driver]

AdClassix.com saved to Aviation Vintage Advertising
1959 Cessna Land-O-Matic airplane original vintage advertisement. It's like driving - only more fun. Cessna's drive up/drive down Land-O-Matic greatly simplifies business flying for you. Land-O-Matic is the safe flying feature that makes it so much easier for you to fly. It makes landing a Cessna about as easy as driving your car downhill.

[photofly]

"You drive it up... you drive it along ... you drive it down" I think the ad reads.

I believe Cessna had to redesign the original 172 nose gear for the 172A to try to reduce the hideous number of landing accidents cause by pilots literally trying to drive it onto the runway.

[Cat Driver]

"You drive it up... you drive it along ... you drive it down" I think the ad reads.

That was a copy of the Cessna add that google found for me.

The bottom line is Cessna hit a home run with the 172, it totally changed flight training.

I remember the first one that came to Central Airways as a demonstrator, we all walked around it and thought it was ugly, but that was the end of the Cessna 170 because when Central bought the 172's they just completely took over and are still the mainstay of flight training.

If I were given the choice of nose wheel piston airplane as my personal toy it would be the Grumman F7F Tiger Cat.

The only one I ever saw fly was at the last airshow I flew in in Holland, it was parked right in front of me and I talked to the pilot while we waited for our turns to fly.

I followed him out and waited at the departure end of the runway and did he ever put on a display...that fu.k.n thing out flew any twin engine airplane I ever saw.

Yup....I want one.

[WastedFlyer]

"kick the hell out of .."

Bizarre .. I can't imagine any aircraft where you should kick the hell out of any of the controls including old tail draggers and I can't imagine that technique being successful. What was he flying that demanded such aggressive rudder use?

Obviously the "kick the hell out of .." is an amusing exaggeration. What happens is that, without a nose wheel which will respond nimbly to gentle rudder adjustments, the only way to keep a taildragger straight on a takeoff roll (and after landing) is moving the tail left or right by applying left of right RUDDER. At very low speeds (below stall speed), applying full rudder left or right barely moves the tail. So basically, starting the take-off roll, any correction, to be effective, has to be "full rudder" left or right. As the airplane picks up speed, you'll notice the rudder becoming more effective and rudder use becomes gentler, and by the time the a/c is past stall speed then the rudder is fully effective, as effective as in a nose-wheeler...

[Adam Oke]

Did you catch that GZRO? If it wasn't for AvCanada you'd probably ground loop your Pitts!

[WastedFlyer]

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[Cat Driver]

So basically, starting the take-off roll, any correction, to be effective, has to be "full rudder" left or right.

Interesting statement.

I was taught to use rudder to prevent or/ and control yaw by identifying the start of yaw.

When training pilots I do not allow them to use excessive rudder in puts for the simple reason it is over controlling and in some aircraft it can be disastrous.

By the way flying helicopters will teach you how to control yaw by early identification of yaw changes..

leave the throttle alone unless there was some necessary adjustments and grab the yoke using both hands...

You are joking I assume?

[Shiny Side Up]

The reason that the C172 sold so well in the stone-age was because of the hype put on it by Cessna's sales department! Who wouldn't want a "modern" all metal airplane with "land-o-matic" landing gear for $9000.00

So you're saying that pilots back in the day were so dimwitted that they believed Cessna's sale's pitches? That seems to be contrary to the current dogma that all of them were an elite cadre of experts. Also, the 170, which for a brief time sold along side the 172 was the same price.

[WastedFlyer]

So basically, starting the take-off roll, any correction, to be effective, has to be "full rudder" left or right.

Interesting statement.

I was taught to use rudder to prevent or/ and control yaw by identifying the start of yaw.

When training pilots I do not allow them to use excessive rudder in puts for the simple reason it is over controlling and in some aircraft it can be disastrous.

By the way flying helicopters will teach you how to control yaw by early identification of yaw changes..

leave the throttle alone unless there was some necessary adjustments and grab the yoke using both hands...

You are joking I assume?

Cat, thanks for the call-out... I have minimal experience (around 100 hours) and that was in the '80s, so I should know better than putting forward my perspective and recollections, lest people end up heeding my rookie and potentially outdated/dangerous comments...

[photofly]

I believe one of the attractions of the 172 at the time was actually identified on the same ad, that you don't need to be a "professional pilot" to fly one. It was billed as transport for the masses, not for dedicated pilots. And lo, it's easier to learn to fly, a fact we're bitching about sixty years later.

[Cat Driver]

Cat, thanks for the call-out... I have minimal experience (around 100 hours) and that was in the '80s, so I should know better than putting forward my perspective and recollections, lest people end up heeding my rookie and potentially outdated/dangerous comments...

the problem with the internet is it is so impersonal and thus it can be difficult to determine what someone is trying to say.

My response was to clarify what you were trying to explain and in that I had no idea what your background is I was giving my opinion on the use of rudder.

No personal offence to you was meant.

. E.

[Cat Driver]

Cat, thanks for the call-out... I have minimal experience (around 100 hours) and that was in the '80s, so I should know better than putting forward my perspective and recollections, lest people end up heeding my rookie and potentially outdated/dangerous comments...

the problem with the internet is it is so impersonal and thus it can be difficult to determine what someone is trying to say.

My response was to clarify what you were trying to explain and in that I had no idea what your background is I was giving my opinion on the use of rudder.

No personal offence to you was meant.

. E.