My second tail dragger lesson started with a quick pre-brief with Bob on the maneuvers we were going to practice. Basically more coordination practice and stalls. This time I got to do the pre-flight on my own no issues found. Bob arrived, asked me about oil and fuel and then we went through the “brakes, throttle, contact” routine as he hand prop’d the plane. Unlike last time, I got to try and make the right turn out of the tie down spot – no luck, even with full right rudder she wouldn’t turn and we were headed for the fuel truck when Bob took over and made the turn – it is a difficult dance between holding full rudder, tapping the right brake and applying power to get around the corner. Once around however, I took care of the taxi all the way to the run-up area. One of the mags was a little rough on run-up but high power for about 20 seconds cleared it (there is no mixture control to lean the engine to help clear the plugs). We were cleared for take-off on 31L and this time I got to work all the controls. Stick about 2/3 forward, full power, keep her straight, 40 MPH, stick a little forward to bring up the tail – now really keep her straight, then we’re up. It was not pretty, I think I know what I’m doing wrong. When I make a correction, I hold that correction to bring the plane back to the center line (which is what I try to do in my Skylane). However, this is the wrong thing to do. Instead the aim is to just keep the tail behind the nose because once it starts to swing around it takes increasing force to correct. So being a bit off center line is fine, don’t worry about it (I’m sure that as I improve, I won’t get off center line in the first place) – just stop the sideways movement.
Anyway, we depart downwind towards IBM at 2500”, there is a broken ceiling today a little above 3000” so we’ll be staying low. The climb up is fairly smooth – I getting the hang of using a gentle touch with this plane. I practice some Dutch rolls on the way – not too bad, but I get out of sync quicker than I would like. We do some rudder turns as well. These are just using the rudder to dip the wings, I’m not quite sure what they teach you other than rudder on its own is a piss-poor way to turn an airplane. Once we get over the open country-side south of San Jose we start the airwork with a couple of clearing turns, there is not much traffic today because of the low ceiling. First off its a couple of steep turns just to get back into the feel of the plane. Then straight into stalls with power on and off. I make a reasonable job of these, still little too aggressive on dropping the nose for recovery. Then Bob takes control to show me what he calls “rudder stalls”, he warns me that these can get a little violent (that is an ominous term when applied to a plane). So, first he does a power off stall, on the stall break instead of recovering he holds the plane in the stall and then tries to keep the wings level using just the rudder. Now I have done this exact same maneuver in a Skyhawk during my Private Pilot training. I remember at the time telling my CFI that I was a bit scared when I stalled the plane that one wing would drop and I’d start to spin (this happened the very first time I tried a power-on stall and it scared the hell out me, I only had 5.8Hrs at the time). So the CFI says, “Don’t worry if that happens just use the rudder to level the wings, its easy”. He then proceeds to show me by stalling the plane and getting me to hold the wings level with a fixed heading using just the rudder while he held the plane in the stall. It was easy and we held the plane like that for maybe a minute or so. It was a great demo and it did a lot to reduce my fear of power-on stalls. So now I’m wondering why Bob is telling me “it could get a bit violent” doing the same thing in a Champ. It didn’t take long to find out. It was a bit like balancing on the edge of a blade. One wing would start to drop, quick rudder correction, the other wing would start down a little faster, after 3 or 4 oscillations, bam! time to recover! which was pretty easy, just let the nose drop out of the stall. Then it was my turn, I think the most I managed was 2 oscillations before I lost it and automatic (that is mild panic) recovery kicks in. I don’t like flying planes when they are nasty and unstable like this, but it doesn’t scare me nearly as much anymore.
Next up Bob completely screws me up by covering the slip indicator (the ball). Now there is not many instruments in this plane, but I like this one the most and I glance at it a lot. But like all flight training, your favorite instrument is always the one the CFI takes away first! Now its back to steep turns, and I do a fairly poor job of staying coordinated. Basically, I always relied on the ball to tell me which rudder peddle to press. Now, I’m getting pushed out the side of the plane because of a slip or is it a skid? I’m not sure, so which peddle do I press ? Truth be told I’m still not that sure – I need to get this straight in my head the next time out. After a few turns I’m doing a little better, but its more by random experimentation with the peddles rather than an intellectual understanding of what I should be doing. Then its back to more stalls (with no ball!). This time I just try to keep the plane’s nose straight as I get into the stall and hope this keeps me coordinated enough that I don’t drop a wing too much on the break. Nothing too dramatic happens so it must have worked. Then Bob tells me to take my feet off the peddles, stall the plane and when a wing drops try and level it with the ailerons. In other words do everything wrong that you can when you stall a plane. So, feet off the rudder and pitch up. The plane starts yawing & turning to the right, then the stall break and the right wing drops. Quick left aileron to try to level the dropping wing. The result, the bottom drops out from under the right wing and we fall to the right in maybe an 80 degree wing down attitude. Whoa! I’m so surprised Bob has to remind me, “recover with rudder“. Quick left rudder, levels the wings, stick forward and recover from the stall, no problems, much excitement. Thankfully, Bob tells me that that is the most excitement we will have today. The moral of this story is don’t ever ever try to recover wings level in a stall using the aileron – it will just make an already bad day a whole lot worse. For those of you wondering why, what happens is this. When you stall while the airplane is uncoordinated one wing will stall before the other (it drops because it loses lift before the other wing – so the plane is unbalanced around its longitudinal axis ). Now, when you try and correct with aileron, you actually lower the aileron on the dropped wing (aileron down on a wing usually has the effect of increasing the wings lift and causing it to rise). However, the wing is stalled, so when the aileron lowers it changes the cord of the wing which increases the angle of attack (which is the angle between the wing cord and the relative wind).
Now in a well behaved wing, the stall starts at the root first, the wing tips may not be stalled and are providing a little lift. Until you drop the aileron (which is out on near the wing tip) and increase the angle of attack in the last bit of wing that was working. The wing now totally stalls, stops being a wing and becomes dead weight heading towards the earth.
The last set of maneuvers was slips. First forward slips which are easy. Until you try to get smart and smoothly try to transition from left wing down to right wing down. Left to right, right to left, back and forth. This takes some fancy footwork and I confess I just couldn’t get it to work right. This I need to practice. Then we tried side slips, but not your simple drop a wing and keep the nose straight. Bob had me enter a slip and then vary the bank angle more and less while keeping the nose absolutely fixed straight ahead. First banked right then left and back again. Boy this was hard, I had the nose wandering all over the shop, but I can see how fine control of this skill will make cross-wind landing much easier.
At last it was time to head back to RHV. As I attempted to fly straight and level, Bob asked me why we were flying in a slip with the right wing down, dammit the ball is still covered and I can’t feel he slip in the seat of my pants. I try to get the wings as level as I can and the nose pointing in the same direction we are flying. This should be easy but it isn’t. About 3 miles out I’m back in a slip again, simply by virtue of getting the plane lined up with 31L and the nose pointing down the runway (rather than having a crab angle into the wind as one normally would with a slight crosswind). Bob decides I’m practicing my side slips from a long way out and I don’t tell him any different. We have a plane behind us so we keep the power up as we glide down. I hit 60 MPH over the numbers and then flare a little high again. I hold the flare, then as we sink bring the stick all the way back and bam, we set down all three wheels on the center line. I’m on the rudder peddles and we don’t swerve too much. I think Bob might have helped with the braking a little as we rollout. I think we got of at taxiway D which is a pretty long landing. We had asked for the option, so we taxi back to the hold short line and Bob asks the tower for a high speed taxi. This is basically to practice the takeoff roll. It doesn’t go well, we swerve all over the shop – I made the same mistakes I made on the takeoff. At the time I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong, its only later after some thought that I think I know the mistake I’m making. We were going to practice a few more high speed taxi’s, but there are four planes down in the run-up area and things are getting busy. So we terminate with the tower and I taxi back all the way to the fuel truck outside Amelia’s. Part of a tail-wheel checkout at Amelia’s is to learn how to refuel the plane from the truck. Not too hard, but a new skill. Bob did it the first time, this time I did it.
So my second lesson is over. Again, it was great and again I learned a bunch of stuff about basic flying that just wasn’t that real to me before. Sure, I knew about not using ailerons in a stall, but today I really learned why. Sure, I knew about slips, but I never really had any fine control over them. I still don’t, but I’ve got a feeling that after some more practice I will. And lastly, my first unassisted tail wheel landing. Not too bad and actually easier than the takeoff. I’m looking forward to some pattern work to hone this skill.
….Time Passing….More Time Passing….Boom…2 Years Later…..
Well I finally finished my tail wheel endorsement on 4/1/2006, almost two years since I first started it. I flew 4 more times with Bob in the Champ with the last two flights doing pattern work and practicing landings. I got almost 9 hrs in total.Then life intervened, I headed off on a business trip. I never got around to scheduling a next flight with Bob and he never called me back (big sin for a CFI that wants to keep their business going). Frankly, he didn’t really click with me and the training experience wasn’t great. Either way, work got busier and I even stopped working on my commercial rating. I finally got back into the training grove and did my commercial checkride in December of 2004. Then in September 2005 my Private Pilot CFI, Grainne Gilvarry started working as a CFI in Amelia Reid and I re-started the tail wheel endorsement with her in the Citabria. It still took forever, 10 flights & 11hrs spread over 8 months to finally get the endorsement finished. Basically, both our schedules and the weather conspired to make it difficult to schedule flights.
I will say I’m a much better pilot today compared to when I first started flying tail draggers two years ago. Mainly just due to experience with almost twice as many hours. Tail draggers are a lot of fun, they are not all that hard to fly (or land for that matter), you just need to give them your full attention. Flying them WILL absolutely make you a better stick and rudder pilot, you will without doubt fly that Skyhawk or Skylane better. Also after landing the Citabria in a 10-knot crosswind I’m a lot more confident about crosswind landings – a skill that almost cause me to fail my commercial checkride.