Web - pretty funny
CuBob, and others. I guess I've been a little distracted lately. But lets try to get this thread back up to speed.
THE FOLLOWING NOTES ARE GENERALIZATIONS - THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO EVERYTHING -
Traash - You make an excellent point and one I had not covered so lets talk about that a little.
In life we sometimes get "Negative Transfer". This is when a motor skill that works in one situation is wrong in another situation. A perfect example is kids sleds. The rudder bar on the front of the sled, for your feet (or hands), works exactly the opposite from an aircraft rudder. So kids that do a lot of sledding have to unlearn that hand/eye muscle memory motion when learning to fly. The problem is that in a "panic" situation we often revert to a previously learned skill set. As I recall that falls under the "Law of Primacy" ie you will revert to what was learned first.
A taildragger is pretty much the opposite of the trike in just about EVERY respect on the ground.
Throttle - If you get in trouble with directional control on the ground in a tricycle gear airplane the correct action in almost every case is throttle idle and get on the brakes. In a taildragger - when having directional control issues - throttle up gives more tail authority and is the correct response most of the time, but that is the opposite of what you would do in a car, or with a horse, or with most other things in life. We pull back and slow down. But in a tail dragger we need to push up and lean forward.
Brakes - again...... in a trike - get in trouble - get on the brakes. With the mass in front of the mains this is stabilizing. In a taildragger it will make things worse (unless using just one brake to supplement rudder).
Elevator - in a trike letting the stick/yoke come forward, lowers the nose and thus AOA and is again stabilizing and generally good. In a taildragger if we let the stick come forward (three point or while high speed taxi - landing rollout etc) it lifts the tail so we loose the tailwheel steering component and we loose the drag pulling back on the tail so it is DESTABILIZING. Again the opposite of what works in a tricycle gear airplane.
Rudder - in a tricycle gear airplane the center of mass in front of the mains means it will pretty much auto correct and it WANTS to roll straight. In the tail dragger it WANTS to go backwards. So the tricycle gear pilot learns to minimize rudder on roll out to avoid over correcting or PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation). The taildragger pilot MUST use rudder. Again - almost an exact opposite control input needed.
Bottom line - a taildragger is pretty much the opposite of a trike on the ground. They are not the same. One of my mantras............is......
Airplanes are different and each must be flown according to its characteristics in order to maximize utilization, performance, and safety
You do not use rudder in an F-16 but it is critical in a sailplane, you use the elevator and throttle differently in a tricycle gear airplane Vs a taildragger (on the ground). A high sink rate in a swept wing aircraft can be deadly, much less so in light wing loading, high lift wing like a Cub. The bottom line is that you don't fly a Cub like a Cirrus, or a Pitts like a Waco. Fly each airplane differently according to what it needs.
Controls while taxiing
Remember the axiom when getting your private pilots license "Climb into - Dive away"? That is the one that says to "position the controls when on the ground taxiing so that you are climbing into a headwind and diving away from a tailwind". With a headwind we have the stick back, ie climb, and the aileron into the wind thus "Climb into" the wind. With a tailwind we put the stick forward and the aileron away from the wind thus "dive away" from a tailwind. That is only about 1/2 correct for a taildragger. You should ALWAYS have the aileron into the headwind but the elevator depends. We have our forward speed and the propwash over the tail so MOST of the time in a taildragger the elevator should be full aft while taxiing. If you are not sure where to put the elevator (you don't know if the air is flowing over the elevator from the front or from the back (tailwind)) just stick your hand out of the window. Is the wind hitting your hand from the front or from behind? You will find that about 95% of the time it is coming from the front thus - stick back. It takes a LOT of wind (probably over 20knots) before you need to taxi with the stick forward. You could argue that the wind is not the same from where you have your hand out to where the tail is and there would be merit to that argument but it takes a LOT of wind from the rear to make a 180 degree change in that 10' difference in distance. Furthermore I am an advocate of stick ALL THE WAY AFT - WELDED TO THE STOP when taxiing. If you let the controls flop around you beat up the elevator and back end of the airplane when it bounces over every bump. Additionally you loose directional control with the tailwheel when it is not on the ground or when it is so light it slides sideways rather than gripping and turning. Now as I said before there are exceptions to everything - if you are on ROUGH ground you may need to lighten the tail to keep from pounding the tailwheel over the rocks. You may need to lift the tail to turn over an obstacle. Etc. But I see guys all the time taxiing with the elevator bouncing stop to stop, pounding the back end of the airplane all to hell, and I just want to run out there and tell them to hold the stick back because they are tearing up their airplane. Be kind to your airplane, treat it with respect, STICK BACK, STICK BACK, STICK BACK.
To adress shimmy. FIX IT!!!! The tailwheel should not shimmy. Period!! Yes Tom - your technique is good and will help -until you can get it fixed. But I would maintain that regular use of stop gap measures is not really all that good and the best solution is to fix the tailwheel.
This area - Control position while taxiing - is probably the area with the most exceptions. Some of these rules must be modified when taxiing downhill, or on a side slope, or based on the particular type of airplane, etc etc. Please don't beat me up too much, just remember...... MOST of the time keep the aileron into the wind and the stick aft.
GROUND CONTROL EXERCISES
Someone mentioned it earlier so lets take a few minutes to talk about ground control exercises. Some have called it flying while on the ground. You MUST have complete control at all times when on the ground or in the air (unless doing aerobatics, then it can be kinda fun to momentally be totally out of control).
Exercise 1
You should be able to do one wheel "touch and goes" anytime, every single time. Okay - exceptions - (man I get tired of trying to think of every possible exception) but here are a few. Doing a one wheel touch and go on asphalt with NO crosswind might work but it will be exciting and scrape a lot of rubber off. With grass there is usually enough sliding ability that the tire can slide a little sideways and you can do a one wheel T&G even without a crosswind. Wet grass in the early morning helps too. Obviously a crosswind makes it better. So......with a little crosswind you should be able to land on the upwind tire and roll along for as much runway as you feel comfortable, and NEVER touch the tail or downwind tire. A one wheel T&G if you please. Get good at it. Everytime!! MAKE THE AIRPLANE DO YOUR WILL.
Exercise 2
If the is no crosswind then land on one wheel, roll a few seconds, switch to the other tire, roll a while, go back to the first tire. Practice, practice practice.
Exercise 3
Not really an exercise but in fact something that can be practiced in a light or strong X/W. A proper wheel X/W landing is a three pointer. 1st point - is the upwind wheel, 2nd point - slowly "fly" the tail down, 3rd point - the downwind wheel touches when you run out of aileron authority. Upwind, tail, downwind - IN THAT ORDER. Practice, Practice, and Practice. A three point landing might be tail, upwind wheel, and downwind wheel. The difference is this will all happen in very quick succession Vs the wheel landing above where there might be several seconds between each wheel.
Exercise 4
If you have a nice wide grass runway, or can get to one, do a wheel landing on one edge of the runway, while rolling down the runway on the mains, move to the other edge of the runway. Go back and forth. This will actually be uncomfortable the first few times.
Exercise 5
Try dragging the tailwheel down the runway without ever touching the mains.
Exercise 6
Landings. There are lots of different types of landings. You should be able to wheel land (in a Cub) at about 70MPH. You should be able to wheel land at 50mph. These two landings are quite different. Then there is the tail low 40 mile an hour wheel landing where you touch town in a very tail low attitude (but not on the tailwheel) and then roll it up on the mains.
Three point landings can be 1) tail first, 2) three point, and 3) tail low but not completely three point until just a moment after touchdown. I think that even if you prefer wheel landings and rarely do three points you should try to maintain proficiency in all types. It will make you a better pilot. It's like tools in a tool box. The more tools you have the more jobs you can do, and the better you can execute those jobs. But that tool needs to be rust free and well oiled when you take it out of the box to use it, even if you do not use it often.
Exercise 7
Turning takeoffs and turning landings. Good stuff to practice if you can find a place to do so. Just remember, turning takeoffs to the left are higher risk, due to torque, "P" factor, Slipstream effect, Gyroscopic effects, and opposite rotation.
Exercise 8
Highly dangerous and not recommended. Do a wheel landing, add power as necessary, brake to a stop with the tail in the air. Take off without having ever touched the tail. In NO WIND/CALM WIND conditions, after coming to a stop as above, do a 360 piroutte, then take off, again never touching the tail. Learn to land with the brakes locked. On final get behind the power curve so you are below stall speed. At the landing point, chop the power, drop flaps and plop down, brake hard. These are dangerous exercises and I do not recommend you do them.
Attitude landings
In higher performance taildraggers you will set a landing attitude and maintain that through the flare/float to touchdown. Normally higher performance airplanes touchdown in a three point attitude well above stall speed so the aircraft is still flying and still has a lot of energy at touchdown. This is commonly seen in aircraft like the Pitts, Thorpe T-18, RV's (a little), and most other high performance types. Here is what I mean. Once you get in the flare in a Cub we hold it off (assuming a three point) until all the airspeed is gone and the airplane effectively stalls into the touchdown. If it stalls a foot or so above the ground its is no big deal, just keep the stick back and it will plop down just fine, though perhaps a little unceremoniously, but it will be safe. If you get a Thorpe T-18 in the flare then hold it off like this it will eventually get pretty nose high, touchdown on the tail first, but when the mains come down you will get into a fore/aft pitching (PIO) motion - porpoise- I like to call a "crowhop" and things will get exciting really fast. You can not just get in the flare and "hold it off" in a high performance taildragger. Before you take off you take a moment to fix the attitude you are in while sitting on the ground firmly in your head. Where does the horizon hit the glareshield/windscreen? What angle is the horizon relative to the wing? What do you see over the nose? How high is your rear off the ground? When you get in the flare you find this attitude and maintain that, using throttle but NOT increasing AOA/attitude, until touchdown. If you float in the flare you must use the throttle to control sink and attitude to keep from dropping in, or dropping it in tail first.
OK folks. Probably lots of opinion here so take it all with a salt lick
Hope this helps
Fire away
Bill