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


I installed an RV backup camera in my Spitfire. I can see down the runway
and see my landing gear position.

Bob Mears

Great idea. I can't see out of the RV4 either.

Paul Lamar