This is the first time I have flown one of these
since I was fourteen or fifteen. I forgot how bad it
was.

Horrible handling airplane. Terribly un coordinated.

Don't learn in it unless you can afford to spend twice as much time
and money. The flying skills you learn are then useless for flying any other
type of modern aircraft.

However it is fun and challenging :)

Paul Lamar
--



Flying something like a Cub or Champ will make the automatic parts of your brain ready to work without you thinking about it. You call it bad, but it's actually perfect for flight training.  If you can make the Cub do your bidding, the only problem you'll have with the RV is getting used to its small and light control inputs. Some people might over-control in the first few moments of transition. Hopefully you will get you a bit of stick time in another RV before having to do it solo.


Matt-

The reason it is bad is nobody designs an airplane today with out due diligence
to coordination and aero balance of the controls. There is no upside to uncoordinated and unbalanced controls. It is like an old unstable car. Yes you can learn to drive it but why do that if it can be made stable. Therefor I disagree with the idea it is perfect for flight training. Get lessons in a C172.

After you have your license get checked out in a Cub if you feel the need to find out what it was like to fly in the 1930's.  Build a replica of the Wright Flyer if you really want to learn to fly a bad airplane.  Yes it was the first barely controllable airplane but technology improves.

The other Cub drawback is the early versions did not have flaps so the flare is
very nose high which totally obscures the runway ahead. In fact Piper
lost a huge law suite about 30 years ago because of this factor. As I recall it
bankrupted them. This had a very negative effect on the light plane industry. Cessna stopped building and selling piston powered aircraft. Congress had to enact a law prohibiting liability suites for products 17 years or older.

Paul Lamar