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


 Â  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. Â Just fly it
 down and land it. Â Ask RV4 pilots who fly a lot if you should make
 wheel landing or 3 pt and do it. Â I can't even imagine not doing
 wheel landing in cross wind, but haven't flown low wing tail
 dragger. Â Also, you can see ahead with wheel landing just like if
 flying trike gear. Â You touch down with nose as low or lower (since
 no nose gear to hit first) than in trike gear. Â 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. Â 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. Â Forget
 the tail wheel except for taxi (unless RVs are way better than other
 taildraggers). Â If strong xwind and brakes fail you're going off the
 runway. Â 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. Â So, you will always be able to
 steer. Â These RV tail draggers can't be hard to land or there
 wouldn't be so many. Â You will be fine. Â Forget the cub and get dual
 time with RV taildragger pilot or low wing warbird taildragger
 pilot. Â They can show you best way to land it. Â But, I can't stress
 enough to learn wheel landings. Â 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. Â 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. Â Then they understand.

 PS, I learned to fly in a military flying club at Ft Gordon, GA. Â All
 we had was PA-!2 and PA-18 Cubs and a Cessna 140 and a 195 with the
 Goodyear castering main gear. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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


 There was a reason that prior to WWII the majority of airports were
 large grass fields that allowed one to land into the wind regardless
 of where the wind was coming from!

 SD


Hence the use of the term "air field" instead of "air strip".
When I was learning to fly in a Cessna 120, this was only a few years
back, Paul told me that tail draggers where from a time when we had
air fields and you could land into the wind everytime.
I now have about 350 hrs, five of which are tricycle gear. About half
are in my Cessna 170B.
I ended up switching airports when I came home from a trip with a 90
degree xwind 23 gusting to 32. My new airport has three runways one of
them grass. 06-24, 12-30 and 18-36. 12-30 is grass. Grass will save a
bunch of tire wear. I have heard of guys getting over 2000 landings on
a set of tire on grass, and only 500 or so on pavement.


    If you choose to 3 point land every landing you will soon be a
member if you are not already  of the ground loop club.
When  you have to 3 point land to get into a strip you most likely will
not have enough room to take off especially loaded.
If you wheel land a little tail low the speed will be slightly higher
than 3 point, you will be able to see the runway, use flight controls to
steer and easily transition to brake steering as the speed bleeds off
and the tail touches down.
If you learn to land a tail dragger it will make your tri gear landings
easier.

Ex crop duster   Steve

What you can get out of depends on the HP to weight ratio and the diameter of the prop. That is where the p-port rotary comes into it's own. We have
several people on here building STOL air planes with exceptional HP to weight
ratio Mazda  p-ports. I can hardly wait for the results. I have some experience flying my C182 on short soft fields and you are quite right so far. It will land on strips you cannot get it out of with a reasonable load. However it only has
230 HP while weighing up to 3000 pounds. Imagine a Zenair CH801 with 250 HP
Mazda p-port and a gross weight of only 2,200 pounds. A Zenair CH801 would
never tolerate the weight of a Continental O-470.

Paul Lamar