Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
Nice post, Navigatro.
Sky, you are showing your age on how flight instructors regard tailwheel airplanes. I believe you are active primary instructor now again, you should be held to a higher standard.
It's completely accurate to say tailwheel trainers and piston singles are harder to handle on the ground because they indeed are. It's also fair game to say older piston singles, and probably all older aircraft, are a pain to fly in any of a number of ways because technology has marched on to make them safer and easier to fly over the years.
But you are remiss on a critical issue, SkyHigh, which is that tailwheel airplanes make for excellent trainers when used with lowtime pilots. There is no good substitute for a Cub, Champ, Decathlon, Citabria, or Taylorcraft when it comes to stick-and-rudder feel for small airplanes.
Case in point, an example from my actual daily life. I and several other flight instructors found ourselves in the back of a C206H landing near Denver on Friday past. To be fair about logable times, we had a lowtime pilot flying the last leg of the 400 mile trip. He had maybe 500 hours. But the guy nearly ran off the runway when he landed the airplane. This, on a 150 feet wide runway in mild crosswinds. I nor any of the other guys in the airplane had any doubt why this was the case. He had never flown a tailwheel airplane nor received a tailwheel endorsement. He not only showed poor technique on his landing it was wrong technique, and the only way you can do such an incompetent thing is you have never been trained to land a tailwheel airplane.
I think you are a check instructor for an outfit in rural Washington. Do us a favor and ask to do the checkflights or stagechecks on some primary students at the school. And insist they do their checks on windy days. Be ready to take the controls... and get back to us on why tailwheels are useful in flight instruction.
I have owned a tail wheel plane. I got most of my private pilot training in a taildragger. I was a tail dragger instructor for a well known flight school that specialized in that kind of thing. I have flown a c-185 off airport in the Alaskan bush as a charter pilot. During my time as a bush pilot in Alaska we were able to prove to ourselves that you can do more with the 206 than with a 185. I am sure that flying a tail wheel is good for something but I am not convinced by a long shot that the experience and added skills are really all that valuable to most pilots.
Tail draggers are neat and full of nostalgia, but it has been proven to me and to the rest of the aviation community that they are inferior to nose wheel planes. There hasn't been a modern commercial plane that I can think of that has been built with a tail wheel since the 1960's. I got tired of not being able to fly on windy days so I sold my Taylorcraft and got a 150. The 150 is nearly bomb proof in comparison. You can fly it in almost any type of wind. Insurance is nearly half. I could go on.
I really am well experienced on the topic of taildraggers and think that they are a nostalgic type plane that tries to kill you on every landing. Some people like the thrill of being out of control to some degree and a tail wheel plane meets those needs. Kind of like Harley guys like to break down once in a while. The uncertainty adds to the adventure. However there really is no need to put yourself through that if you don't want to. Nose wheel planes have put the tail dragger out to pasture and the yaw dampener is doing the same to rudder skills.
I understand how modern instructors might feel about flying a tailwheel but it is more about the thrill then about any valid reasons or benefits.
Skyhigh