Tailwheel lesson 3 in the books - crosswinds!

To sum up this morning's flight - it was just plane FUN! Winds were out of the south this morning at about 10 knots, and APA was a bit busy - even at 6:00am in the morning. This means that runway 17 was already in use at APA, so not too much opportunity for good crosswind practice there on runway 28. I was actually encouraged by the amount of flight activity because it means that people are getting out there and flying again.

Unfortunately, we needed to find a good crosswind runway so that John could put me through my paces. So it was off to Front Range airport (KFTG), where the tower let us use runway 26 for a few landings. Crosswind takeoffs were pretty good. I am starting to get the rudder motor skills down a little better. I had also done a bit more reading and learned that the method to counteracting any swerving tendency is to maintain positive pressure on both rudder pedals, and recognize any turning tendency adn apply corrective rudder as soon as possible to arrest the turning tendency. The thing that I did not realize is that once the original turning tendency is stopped, you need to apply opposite rudder pressure to neutralize the possiblity that a turn in the opposite direction may occur. In short, you really have to pay attention to the directional movement of the airplane and take constant corrective action.

Another thing that I did today that helped eliminate the "sudden" left turn was to bring up the tail a bit slower than I did before. This, as far as I am concerned, made a huge difference for me. The airplane wanted to track more of a straight line, and I was able to arrest any turning tendencies fairly easily. The challenging part of today's lesson was that I also needed to work the aileron inputs and outputs during the takeoff roll to handle the crosswind as well. So the rudders, elevators, and ailerons all have to do the right thing at the right time to make it turn out the way it is supposed to.

I made a few pretty good cross landings today - I love touching down with no gear side loads and in a proper crosswind landing attitude, touching down on the upwind wheel first, followed shortly thereafter by the settling of the downwind wheel, with a little chirp or squeak when it meets the asphalt. Always I nice feeling to do any crosswind landing correctly - twice as nice to do it in a tailwheel airplane! I told myself just before my first landing that I would not allow the airplane to fly me, but I would fly the airplane. that is afterall what a pilot is supposed to do. If you end up letting one of these types of airplanes do what they want to do then your tailwheel flying career may indeed be a very short one.

We left KAPA with a slightly lower fuel capacity than usual, so we decided to land full stop and get some fuel from the self service fuel pump at KFTG. This was the first time I have ever used that pump - so it was good to learn how to do that as well. Then we had a cup of coffee and a cookie (the restaurant was not open yet), and then we hopped back in the plane and made our way back to KAPA, where John demonstrated a very nice wheel landing for me.

So can you guess what is on tap for tomorrow's lesson? Yup - wheel landings! I finally get to feel like that WWII fighter pilot that I have always admired. Wheel landings are simply landings on the main gear only, leaving the tail up until the speed dissipates enough to allow the tail to come down, at which time I resume control of the airplane via the tailwheel instead of the rudder. Good directional control and crsswind handling are essential for this type of landing, not to mention the ability to "stick" the wheels on the runway without bouncing. This is the landing that creates the WOW factor in all those WWII aircraft you see at the airshows and at Oshkosh.

I currently have 3.9 tailwheel hours logged. Sure feels like I should have a lot more.After every flight I have felt a bit mentally and physically exhausted. I guess I consider that a sign that I must be devoting the right amount of attention to everything while we are in the airplane. You need to operate these types of airplanes with the utmost attention from the time you do the preflight to the time you tie it back down again. You just can't let your guard down very much if you want to fly these airplanes correctly.

Aspen Flying club's insurance requirements are actually quite surprising to me. For folks with no tailwheel time they require 10 hours dual and a checkout in the plane. I have already told John that I won't even allow him to sign me off unless I feel like I have accumulated enough skill to feel comfortable operating the airplane in a variety of flight conditions.

I am gaining confidence with each flight lesson. That, combined with learning the feel and muscle motor skills that are required for such things as operating the rudder pedals and positioning the controls for crosswind handling, is making this a really fun and enjoyable experience. That said, tomorrow is the last lesson for while as we are approaching the long holiday weekend for Labor Day. Both John and I are committed to other plans over the holiday, so we will need to resume the training later next week. We will see how well I retain all this stuff after letting it settle for a few days.

All pilots flying out of KAPA tomorrow, watch out, cuz I will be terrorizing the skies yet again!