Taildragger Landing

[Colonel]

I made the mistake of clicking on a tailwheel landing video on Youtube, and
after that, I was inundated with endless Youtube videos on taildraggers.
Reminds me of the time I clicked on a Hentai video.

Anyways, back to taildraggers. I don't think anyone making instructional videos
on Youtube has much flying experience. They certainly have no tailwheel flight
instructor experience, because they never mention anything important, like this:

1) Never land in a crab, unless the runway has no friction. A dry paved runway is
the most dangerous there is, for a taildragger. If you disregard this, you will start
a groundloop immediately after touchdown, unless you're a genius on the rudder
pedals. But if you are a genius, why did you touch down in a crab?

2) Less is more. Youtube videos tell you to use your feet. This is a stupid if you
did not touch down in a crab (see above) and are rolling down the runway, nice
and straight. Stay off the goddamned rudder pedals if you don't have a problem,
otherwise you will create one.

3) Wheel landings are great. But when you lower the tail, the gyroscopic effect
of the prop blades will swing the nose RIGHT so you had better be ready with the
left rudder, esp with a crosswind from the right. Lesson: lower the tail very
slowly, esp with a metal blade prop. This is not as great a concern with a wood
or composite blade prop. I'm pretty sure no Youtube influencer could tell you the
equation for moment of inertia.

4) Speaking of wheel landings, always touch down a taildragger in a slip, so that
one main touches before the other, even if there is no crosswind. This avoids
the C of M behind the mains pulling the tail down and cranking up the AOA and
lift and bouncing you back up into the air. This trick is so simple and wonderful
and easy, no one on Youtube has ever heard of it.

5) Speaking of crosswinds, as you slow down, the aircraft will attempt to weathervane
into the crosswind as the rudder loses effectiveness. A burst of power can help
with directional control, but it extends your landing rollout. Better yet, as you slow
down, gradual and then FULL aileron into any crosswind, to generate maximum
adverse yaw from the downwind aileron, to try to keep you straight. This is not optional -
this is ESSENTIAL with a taildragger in a strong crosswind, and as you might expect,
is not emphasized by the Youtube brain trust: every crosswind landing in a taildragger
ends the rollout with the stick ALL THE WAY OVER into the wind, every time.

6) Speaking of a burst of power ... it will swing the nose LEFT. If you have chosen
a 90 degree crosswind from the LEFT this can be disastrous - even with full RIGHT
rudder, you may not be able to stop the yaw to the left. No one on Youtube AFAIK is
aware of this. If you have a 90 degree crosswind, you really want it from the RIGHT
so that if you start to weathervane RIGHT, a burst of power swings the nose LEFT
back to the centerline without requiring any genius rudder work, or any rudder work at all.

7) another reason to choose the 90 degree crosswind from the RIGHT is that with
standard left traffic, you will have a headwind on base, which slows things down,
which is very good for pilots because they crash when they get behind the airplane.
If you are a Youtube moron and choose a crosswind from the LEFT, you will have
tailwind on base (with standard traffic pattern) and you will arrive high turning final
and overshoot. Hilarity and possibly fatality may result at your expense.

8) Try to flare slowly. Flaring quickly will yaw the aircraft right and guarantee a
landing in a crab, which is a prelude to a groundloop. This is never, ever mentioned
or which aircraft are more likely to do this (hint: metal blade prop).

9) After a wheel landing touchdown, everyone says "stick forward" which is very
difficult for people. Instead, dial in some nose-down trim on final. This sounds stupid
but worked very well for the many, many people I gave tailwheel instruction to over
the decades.

There. I have saved you hours of your life, so you don't need to wade through
endless Youtube instructional videos, created by people that have no clue. You
can get back to your Hentai.


Bonus tip from a moron that's been flying tailwheel for over half a century:

10) at some point you will be pointed at the runway edge. This happens. Let's
say you are pointed at the right runway edge. You will probably apply full left
rudder (first step), and I congratulate you. However, if you are like the rest of the
human race, you will hold the left rudder for too long, and will end up pointing at
the left edge of the runway at a greater angle than you were initially pointing at
the right.

This is called a divergent oscillation, and it is rarely fatal, but often very expensive.

What you need to do in the above, is start to decrease the left rudder as the
aircraft straightens out, on the right side of the runway. You're not on the centerline,
that's ok, they spray it with special paint which repels students.

You will likely need a tiny tap of right rudder (second step) after you get off the left
rudder above, to stabilize the aircraft, parallel to the runway centerline, on the right
side of the runway.

Once you calm down, gently apply the tiniest amount of left rudder - resulting
in less than 5 degrees yaw - to gently start the aircraft trending left, towards
the runway centerline.

Catch the runway centerline using the three step technique described above.

This "three step" technique is essential to maintaining directional control on
the runway in a taildragger, and is never, ever mentioned by Youtube influencers
whom are often junior to tins of paint that I have on my shelf.

[JW Scud]

Thanks for the info. I have heard much of this before over the years in various posts you have made but now it is all together. I will copy and paste for my notes.

I have a question about #2. What you said makes sense but it is not the theory I have been using for myself. My feeling has been to make small, perhaps almost imperceptible inputs as I roll down the runway. Not enough to really have any significant effect. I am not 100% sure I actually do this as I rarely remember the automatics of rudder inputs that happened on a normal takeoff or landing. But I do have the theory that this is what should be done. Why? The theory is that if I am making small inputs, the aircraft is reacting to me and I am in control while the alternative is that I am reacting to the aircraft and it is in control.

Any opinion?

[Colonel]

No one can tell you what works for you. Do what works for you.

That said, here's the theory. A tailwheel aircraft without bent landing gear
rolling perfectly straight down the runway, in the absence of external perturbations
will continue to roll perfectly straight down the runway.

Imagine a broom balanced perfectly vertically upwards on the tip of your finger. It
will remain there, until you move, and then as the angle off increases, it will have
more and more torque pulling it off. If you have ever done a compression test on
an aviation engine, it is exactly the same - you can take your hands off the prop at
TDC with 80 psi going in, and it will remain there unless you nudge it, and then it
will violently swing off.

Hopefully the above helps you understand the theory, that if everything is perfect,
you don't need to do anything. In fact, if you do anything, it will likely make it much
much worse.

Sometimes I see pilots pumping on the rudder pedals like they were riding a bicycle
as they roll down the runway. Often they make things harder for themselves.

A true master of any craft is a minimalist. Watch Clapton or Knopfler play guitar,
and you will see no wasted motion. Over the decades, they have learned what they
don't need to do. Same with taildragger landings. Less is more. Give yourself an
easy problem to solve. Don't have bent landing gear - very common - and touch
down perfectly aligned with your direction of travel.

Spin recovery is exactly the same. Power off, full rudder opposite the yaw,
and allow the ailerons and elevator to trail with your hand off the stick. That
doesn't work for all airplanes - check your POH - but gosh, it works well for me.

[JW Scud]

Thanks,

Who knows. Maybe I am making things more difficult for myself without realizing it.

Perhaps my idea is more appropriate, or perhaps even less appropriate on gusty days. One will be getting varying forces on the aircraft. On the other hand, one may be making a detrimental rudder input at just the wrong time.

[Colonel]

Maybe I am making things more difficult for myself without realizing it.

I can't think of anything more natural than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintende ... se_results

In 2003, Barbra Streisand unsuccessfully sued Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for posting a photograph of her home online. Before the lawsuit had been filed, only 6 people had downloaded the file, two of them Streisand's attorneys.

The lawsuit drew attention to the image, resulting in 420,000 people visiting the site.

The Streisand Effect was named after this incident, describing when an attempt to censor or remove a certain piece of information instead draws attention to the material being suppressed, resulting in the material instead becoming widely known, reported on, and distributed.

Barbra Streisand got upset about four people downloading a picture of her house, so
her actions - which co$t her legal fee$ - resulted in 420,000 seeing the picture she tried
to suppress.

Meta-lesson: just because your intentions are good, and you put a lot of effort into something,
doesn't guarantee that your inputs are going to improve the situation. This is an incredibly
important life lesson, and not just about tailwheel landings. Learn from the mistakes of idiots.

After another 10,000 tailwheel landings, you may independently conclude that less is more.

Or watch this Master at work:



Over many decades, he has distilled his craft down into what he needs to do. No wasted effort.

That's like watching Bob Hoover or Rob Holland fly. A Master always makes it look easy because
they are minimalists. You look at them and say, "Gosh, that looks easy. I could do that".



No, you can't. Not without decades of daily effort, which is unheard of in the 21st Century of
instant gratification.

EDIT -- I hasten to add that the master of that formation landing video was NOT the straight man
in the left aircraft (me) who managed to land without crashing. The master was the kid turning
30 years old on right wing, landing with fuselage overlap in right echelon. His logbooks indicate three
decades of flying. If you look at his first logbook, you can see that he logged dual instrument approaches
(ILS, LOC BC, NDB) in actual IMC at the age of six months, with no CARs contravention.

The really interesting life lesson he can teach you is that he became a master despite some really
shitty flight instruction. His flight instructor is so incompetent, according to Transport Canada, he
is not eligible to renew either of his Class One instructor ratings in Canada. BPF can explain this.

So. The second meta-lesson today is that all the greats taught themselves. Do not rely on others
to spoon-feed you, the important stuff that you need to know. Now, with that in mind, go to the
top of this thread and read it again. And remember that after ten years of daily practice, you will start
to see your shortcomings. More decades of daily practice required.

[Squaretail]

never, ever mentioned by Youtube influencers

Oddly enough, when it comes to flying airplanes most specifically instructional flying videos are pretty crap. I haven't seen anything worth watching. That's not to say there isn't stuff you can learn, but that's by accident more than it is on purpose. This is unlike almost everything else, sure there's still a lot of crap, but it won't take long to find how to do something that's actually worthwhile. There are perhaps other skill sets that are similar to aviating that don't translate to the video medium well, I suspect you don't want to learn how to ride a motorcycle on youtube either.

Of note, when I have videotaped (there's got to be a new term, we don't use tape anymore) flights, stuff I thought that was very apparent in flight (for example, the airplane not being on centerline or flight path not being parallel to the centerline) isn't very apparent in the video. I mean I can still tell, but it isn't as eye poppingly obvious which I found precluded it as an instruction tool for the actual hands on stick skills. That was just my experience with it, other's experience may vary. But with that in mind if one was going to edit a video for instructional purpose, I don't know how one would go about highlighting items or providing the best commentary.

[Colonel]

when it comes to flying airplanes most specifically instructional flying videos are pretty crap

Well, their production quality might be good sometimes, but their content sucks.

The scary thing is that when it comes to stuff I am well-informed about (taildragger, Hentai, C/asm)
I know the videos are sh1t. But what about topics that I don't know about?! Are those videos crap, too?

I suspect you don't want to learn how to ride a motorcycle on youtube either.

Right. I don't watch motorcycle videos on Youtube. Well, that's not quite true. I watch stuff
and say, "that's crap ... that's crap ... that's crap ... hey, that's a good idea".

See, unless you already know about a topic, you don't know how to filter out the crap to find
that one tiny gem of information, quite possibly delivered by a complete idiot.

Reminds me of physics profs who could only solve problems they had done before. Not
terribly useful in the general case.

when I have videotaped flights, stuff I thought that was very apparent in flight isn't very apparent in the video.

The trick there, is to use a LOT of cameras and edit it all together afterwards. Like that
@ssclown that jumped out of a T-cart - check out all the different angles he documented
of that "surprise" event.

[Squaretail]

See, unless you already know about a topic, you don't know how to filter out the crap to find
that one tiny gem of information, quite possibly delivered by a complete idiot.

I wouldn't say that, but certainly knowing what I know as an instructor, has been somewhat transferrable to use as a filter. There's lots of guys trying to deliver "instruction" on stuff who frankly, while thy may be knowledgeable, are terrible at demonstrating, and many "beginner" instructions are nothing of the sort.

I would sort of compare this to how having the knowledge of how tests are constructed, can aid you somewhat in writing the test, even if you know nothing of the subject matter. Knowing how good instruction should be delivered aids you in sorting what is good knowledge to get. While you may have a skilled doer who is not a skilled demonstrator, you never have the opposite combo of a skilled demonstrator who is not a skilled doer. The venn diagram is two separate circles in that case.

[JW Scud]

The really interesting life lesson he can teach you is that he became a master despite some really
shitty flight instruction. His flight instructor is so incompetent, according to Transport Canada, he
is not eligible to renew either of his Class One instructor ratings in Canada. BPF can explain this.

Waiting for an explanation from BPF.

[dumbbell daddy]

I haven’t participated much on this forum since I joined. I just wanted to say great post. This should be a tailwheel sticky. I enjoy reading everything you post Colonel.