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



 Hi Paul, I think the big suit at that time was against Cessna for
 failing seat latches that would leave the pilot in the back seat hanging
 on to the yoke after lift off. I did not see any comments on my "Bass
 Akwards" article. With such a knowledgeable group, I was expecting
 something. http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/articles/2010-11_bass.asp
 There is a link to a side splitting segment from Top Gear.
 -- Murry

 That was another one.
 I had to modify my 182 for that one.

 Paul Lamar

 "The trike arrangement with the single front wheel leads to terminal
 oversteer, a spinout, when pushed to the limit."

 Not necessarily true. Under steer over steer has nothing to do with where
 the wheels are and how many. I don't think he knows what he is talking
 about using these terms in this context. Slip angles vary with load
 and tire construction. The coefficient of friction of a tire also varies
 with load. Higher load lower coefficient of friction. Therefor side
 force generated can vary widely. The major effect is the CG being behind
 the center of side force. If what he says is true fully locking tails
 wheels would
 be more popular. Has anybody on here flown a fully locking tail wheel?

 Paul Lamar


   Less than 40mph stall speed and you need flaps ? Virg

Have you ever hit a pickup truck on the runway at 40 MPH? :)

The flaps keep the nose down at slow speeds so one can see.

Paul Lamar

Awful lot of technology going on about landing a plane.  Just fly it
down and land it.  Ask RV4 pilots who fly a lot if you should make
wheel landing or 3 pt and do it.  I can't even imagine not doing
wheel landing in cross wind, but haven't flown low wing tail
dragger.  Also, you can see ahead with wheel landing just like if
flying trike gear.  You touch down with nose as low or lower (since
no nose gear to hit first) than in trike gear.  You keep pushing on
stick to keep nose down until tail finally falls on its own because
to slow to fly. Still have rudder control for few seconds.  Then
slows down and you lose that. Now you better have brakes that won't
get hot and fail because the brakes are what you steer with.  Forget
the tail wheel except for taxi (unless RVs are way better than other
taildraggers).  If strong xwind and brakes fail you're going off the
runway.  Just hope you're slow enough by then that you don't hit a
wing tip when you have to ground loop it to keep from hitting something.

But, you have good brakes.  So, you will always be able to
steer.  These RV tail draggers can't be hard to land or there
wouldn't be so many.  You will be fine.  Forget the cub and get dual
time with RV taildragger pilot or low wing warbird taildragger
pilot.  They can show you best way to land it.  But, I can't stress
enough to learn wheel landings.  Then you can land anywhere any time
you need to.

Van

True wheel landings are the answer but that negates the whole idea
of a tail dragger in the first place. You cannot make a full stall
low speed wheel landing. That is the wing angle of attack is not
high enough. That also implies a longer runway is needed. Tail
wheels are supposed to be
better in rough, soft field, full stall landings off airport at the
lowest possible speed.

Yes you may have slightly less drag with a tail wheel.

The main problem is you can't see enough to keep it straight in a
full stall landing. One can learn to keep it straight if one had an
out side point of reference. The RV's are better as they have flaps
and are flown from the front seat.

The jpg illustrates a solution. It could also be done with a remote
video camera and monitor in the cockpit.

With all the slop in the tail wheel cable a Cub takes some learning just
to zig zag down the taxi way smoothly. I can't see out of the RV4
when taxing either but taking the slop out of the tail wheel cables
makes it much easier to zig zag so obstructions ahead can be seen.

Paul Lamar


Back in the 1960s, Vietnam era, the Air Force toyed with the idea of
resurrecting the P-51 with a turboprop engine as a ground support
plane.  I believe some flying examples were built but the AF shelved
the idea because they didn't think they could retrain enough pilots
to fly a tail dragger ... and the P-51 did have a lockable tail
wheel. Locking it was on the pre takeoff checklist lest the torque
of the engine would steer you right off the runway on takeoff.

And shopping carts do make good trainers .... just put a case of beer
in one and have the trainee run it around the market backwards for
half an hour.  Then they understand.

PS, I learned to fly in a military flying club at Ft Gordon, GA.  All
we had was PA-!2 and PA-18 Cubs and a Cessna 140 and a 195 with the
Goodyear castering main gear.  I never flew a nose dragger in my
first 100 hours.

SD



The purpose of tail wheel is so you can land on rougher field without
breaking off the nose gear.  If you have the runway do a wheel landing
unless for some strange reason an RV lands better in a xwind in 3pt than
wheel landing.  In wheel landing you can put that wing down and land on one
wheel just like trike gear to keep from drifting across the runway.   The
problems don't start to arise until tail gets low.  If you try to 3pt in
cross wind, its a real bad feeling when you start drifting across the runway
and your nose is stuck in the air and you have very little directional
control because going too slow.

Van

Yeah..  The thing that happens in three-point is you run out of
aileron..  That's because you get slow, start drifting because you
don't have enough bank angle because diminishing airspeed is
diminishing aileron authority, so you add power to give yourself time
to straighten it out, adding power gives you plenty of rudder
authority, but you still can't get rid of the drift because the
aileron is being overridden by the dihedral effect (roll-yaw
coupling).  If you have runway length, convert to a wheel landing..
Or go to a different airport (or taxiway).

As an aside, I've landed tricycle gear airplanes a number of times
when I really didn't have enough control authority to cancel out all
of the drift.  Once in my 182 landing at Reno.  Putting everybody onto
16 when the winds were 280@24 G 28.  I did a no-flap landing, and
still had to angle it up across the runway to keep from crabbing on
touchdown.  No problem with 150' wide runway.  I would have refused
the tower if I had been in a C180 - made them let me land on 34..  And
again in a Beech Sierra.  Same kinda thing - 90 degree cross, with
winds 24-32.  And, my Varieze is to be landed in a crab (or with a
kick) instead of wing-low - because it's easy to drag a wing tip, and
you run out of aileron as speed diminishes.

It can actually be more of a challenge to taxi than to land with that
much crosswind..  You overheat brakes, or just flat can't get the
airplane to go in the right direction.  I remember seeing a C170 get
boxed into a corner between some other parked airplanes because the
pilot couldn't taxi away from the wind.  Was feverishly holding the
yoke to his chest, but didn't realize wind was blowing reverse under
his elevator, unloading the tailwheel, allowing it to skid sideways..
If he had pushed the yoke to neutral, I'm pretty sure he would have
been fine.


Matt-