Lesson 2 for Tailwheel Endorsement - T-offs and Landings

Having been spoiled by my instructor for the first lesson when he handled the first takeoff and landing, we scheduled the second flight for early this morning. Folks that know me know that I am not a morning person at all, except when it comes to two things: hunting and flying. We met at the club at 6:00am and drove to the airplane. After the preflight and some fuel, we talked through the power and airspeed settings, and also had some discussion about slips, similar to Ron Duren's experience in his first couple of flights, since this airplane has no flaps or other devices to slow the airplane down.

With the runup complete, we taxied for takeoff onto runway 10 at KAPA. The first takeoff pretty much scared the hell out of me. I was going to use words like "humbled" and such, but the truth was I was not prepared for the amount of the left turning tendency due to gyroscopic precession and p-factor, nor was I prepared for how much right rudder is required to correct for it. The most noteable thing I took away from this experience was that the airplane will accelerate nicely and the tail will come up largely on its own, but the airplane will remain going straight down the runway until some point is reached several seconds after the tail comes up, and when it hits, the airplane just wants to go left in a big hurry. After seeing my life flash briefly in front of my eyes as I headed for edge of the runway, I managed to put in enough right rudder to get things going striaght ahead, and then the airplane wanted to fly. As the old avaition addage goes: "Flying is the easy part - its the takeoffs and landings that are hard." Sure wish I would have gotten a bit more warning about that. Oh well, now I knew.

Then we got up to pattern altitude. 2200 RPM adn 75 MPH were the target settings for downwind. Then the CGUMPPP check: Carb heat (if installed-NA for this airplane since it is fuel injected), Gas checked, Undercarriage checked, Mixture set, and finally Pumps (fuel in this case) Props, and Power Settings. Abeam the landing point I reduce to 1500-1800 RPM to start a 500 FPM descent, and trim to keep the same 75 MPH  for the remainder of the downwind. At the 45 degree point back to the landing point, the turn to the base leg occurs, and you trim to slow the airplane to 70 MPH. Then comes the turn to final and you keep it at about 65-68 MPH on a stabilized approach, which basically means that your landing point stays in the same position on the wind screen all the way down. I think for the first one or two landings I found myself needing to slip just a small amount to lose a little altitude. THis is cross controlled condition where the wing is banked in one directions while opposite rudder is appled, This basically makes the airplane fly forward in a sideways manner, and it introduces a whole lot of drag which makes the airplane lose altitude very quickly. Whne you are at your desired altitude, the controls are returned to their normal positions and the airplane straightens itself out for the remainder of the approach.

Now fo the first landing. I had expected that my instructor was going to demonstrate one more 3 point landing for me, but I guess he was so impressed with my approach that he decided to let me take it down "all the way!" as I reached short final with about 100 feet left to go I think I said something like " are you going to take it or let me do this?" He said - "you can take it all the way down." So here comes pucker factor number two. I focused on remaining on the center line of the runway, got down to about 10 feet off the ground, and started to level out. Then I gradually eased back on the stick as the airspeed bled off, and WOW! before I knew it, all three wheels were nicely on the ground with a minimum of bounce, and tailwheel landing number one was in the books as a huge success. Of course, there was little or no wind at this time..........

My instructor John told me that the landing was the best first landing he had ever seen anyone complete. Oh great, now my head is swollen with pride and confidence, so I will most certainly screw the next one up royally. Well, as it turned out, I think we did about 5 or 6 more takeoffs and landings, and it wasn't until I was good and fatigued and the end, and the crosswind started to pick up, that I royally botched the last landing. At least it wasn't so bad that I couldn't recover, but it was bad enough - kind of a repeat experience of the first takeoff, only this time being blown toward the edge of the runway to the right because I forgot to keep applying my control inputs into the crosswind. Humbled? To say the least -yes. Scared out of my britches for a second or two?Pretty much.

Except for the last one, all the other landings were pretty good. A little over rotation here and there during the flare on a couple of them but otherwise pretty much in the groove for a 3 point landing. I still have some work to do to figure out the correct timing and amount of rudder pressure to keep her flying straight down the runway on takeoff, but I almost had it worked out by the end of this lesson.

As for slipping the airplane, I found that this was not needed very much if you flew the proper airspeeds and power settings, and maintained a proper pattern. Slips are the exception and not the norm, when a loss of altitude is needed in a short period of time, when no other means of altitude loss is available such as power management, or flaps, etc.

As a flight instructor with my fair share of students under my belt, I can tell you without question that those students that go on to pursue a commercial pilot certificate are the ones that will truly understand how an airplane needs to be controlled to achieve a specific outcome. Another old aviation addage comes to mind: Those who are able to do what is necessary to obtain a Private Pilot Certificate are essentially given a license to continue to learn how to fly. They understand the basics of flying and navigating themselves through the air. Those who then decide to pursue a Commercial Pilot Certificate gain a specific understanding of the performance capabilities and limitations of an aircraft, and possess the necessary skills to make it perform exactly the way that you want it to. Those who receive an instrument rating gain the skills to smoothly and precisely fly the airplane with no outside reference to the ground or the air, or in other words, you learn how to fly the airplane with finesse.

If you fly a proper traffic pattern and are able to maintain precise control of your descent rate and airspeed, then you should not have to perform forward slips very often at all. OK - my instructor hat is back off now. Just had to get that out there...

Do I still wish to pursue this journey of piloting a tail wheeled aircraft - you bet I do. Do I now have a much greater understanding of what can happen if you let this type of airplane get away from you - you bet I do. When it is all said and done, all it takes is proper training and maintaining a certain level of proficiency, just like any other facet of aviation, with someone sitting in the back seat that is experienced enough to know how to keep you out of real trouble at any time during the training.

I'll have more about the build in the next post, but  a quick summary is that I needed to do a bit more research on conduit placement before I forged ahead. I was searching for a post on VAF that I was having a very hard time finding, but I finally located it yesterday... More to come..... Oh yeah, so guess what the next lesson is all about? Crosswind t-offs and landings! I can hardly wait!