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

 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


Also, prior to WW2 many roads were still gravel. In Alberta Canada, hi-way 2
is a major route from the border with the USA through Calgary, Red Deer, and
Edmonton and a loop through Peace River and back to Grand Prairie. It was not
paved until after the war. There were many public works programs undertaken in
the years after the war and road building and improvements were high on the
priority list. I expect the US had similar situation also.

CIS countries are in rural areas in the '50s time line. To get an idea, check
Belarus twenty years after. There is a series of 12 videos by an aid society.
Quite informative and revealing seeing the roads they deal with. Paul toured
there and can relate.

Dale Davies

You can say that again. The autobahns in east Germany were in such bad
shape in 1991 you could not drive over 30 MPH. Russian roads were almost
as bad. Nobody really worked in the commie block. The saying was:
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." The currency was worthless
because you could not buy anything worth having with it. The cars were jokes
like the Traubant and you could not buy houses or land. If we are not careful
it is going to happen here. Here are some pictures of the old now empty Traubant factory.

Paul Lamar