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




I disagree Paul..

It is easier to learn to fly precisely if you start in an airplane
like a Cub or Champ where the fundamental forces of flight are made
obvious to the student.  For instance, in these airplanes, it's
obvious that producing lift generates drag.  Raising a wing with
aileron causes adverse yaw.  Counteracting that yaw with rudder
reduces the overall total drag by making the airplane go through the
air more directly (not as sideways).  This effect isn't as obvious in
a Cessna, unless you are flying slowly (at high angle of attack).
Like should your engine quit (or start to run badly), or you are
attempting to climb steeply.  Proper coordination of rudder and
aileron is likely not learned while in a Cessna.  Knowing how to do it
right may allow you to maintain control of the airplane while under
stress.  Cherokees and Cessnas still crash because of stall-spin
scenarios.  And that's often because a pilot doesn't use the rudder
properly.  My experience in Cessnas is that they are relatively
difficult to spin, and that tells me the stall-spin accidents are
caused by doing the wrong thing, which is caused by not knowing the
fundamentals of flight.


Regards,

Matt-

Yes I know that but it is not hard to add a little drag on the opposite
aileron to counter act the drag due to lift on the up going wing.

That is exactly what all modern airplanes do. The student can discover
that adding angle of attack or adding lift causes drag by merely
watching the air speed indicators as he raises the nose. That is much
more intuitive than finding that out by raising just a wing. In fact he already
knows that by driving a car up a hill.

Paul Lamar