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


-In Sumy, Ukraine they repaved the main road when the president came to a
football (soccer) game a year or so ago.
 Many of the Oligarch (rich) houses are the pink stucco or a yellow tint. In
small towns, some are painted white with blue trim or at the top of windows.
Houses like this are built of a red brick. No insulation, double walls. New
Oligarch houses in cities may have insulation. Many old houses made of wood
are lacking paint. Side streets may have lights on a wood telephone pole like
we had in the '50's. In soviet style apartments, there may be a light in the
stairwell on the 3rd of 5 floors.
 I like the beautiful cobblestone work in some roads and squares. Gotta learn
how to do that.
 If you google earth and pick a place like Sumy (will first take you to Sumy
Oblast/province or state) scroll up to Sumy city and zoom in. When blue
squares show you can click on them and get local photos. Little fountain and
McDonalds are two places I was at. You can get an idea of the difference
between cities and towns or commercial and residential.
 When I was there I saw a Volga 21 outside an apartment building and commented
to the cab driver. He said Russian Mercedes. Volgas were a better auto. A few
people said they had their own car and asked what they had, responded "better
than Muskovich" :-)).
 When buying a shirt one day the couple noticed we used a translator. They
asked where I was from and when told Canada asked a lot of questions about
climate and soil. They know Canada is also a big farming/food producer. They
asked what cities were close. When I responded Edmonton and Calgary they came
back with two thumbs up for Edmonton Oilers and two thumbs down for Calgary
Flames. Very funny for almost 1/2 way around the world, but a lot of east
European players are now in NHL teams.
 I know this is off topic and will leave it now. Hope it gives information,
laughs and desire to look/investigate more.

Dale Davies

We met a Ukrainian  lady at the 1994 world aerobatics competition in Debrichin Hungary that invited us to visit but we never made it. The Ukraine was only 50 miles away but we did not think they would let us in. The base, in 1994, was recently liberated from the Russians and the under ground bunkers are still there for the interceptors. We saw this huge 3 story high poster near the entrance on the way in glorifying the Russian fighter pilots.

Paul Lamar