HDHP: Tailwheel Zen - Reaching a Higher Level of Enlightenment in Taildragger Flying

So to start things off, of course, we have a presentation on flight. We have to start with a disclaimer. The first thing is that this presentation is not a substitute for actual

tailwheel

flight instruction, which I am part of the

tailwheel

flight instructors. union I highly recommend you do this price. Contains the presenter's opinion on these topics. There are certainly many ways to approach this topic. Don't try any of this at home and finally talk to your doctor about your towel rack addiction. So what is the purpose of this program? understanding the tailwheel struggle for the uninitiated the dreaded ground loop we are going to talk about we are going to talk about some tips and things you can do with your tail drag toolbox some resources for more information we are going to help the host got 200 followers on youtube and eventually we hope to generate a lot of hate mail from people who don't agree with what I'm talking about what this show is about it's not about stall techniques it's not about cross country flights and It's not about why the super cub is the best airplane, so you may wonder why I should listen to this idiot.

I have been

flying

taildragger

safely for 22 years and by that I don't mean I have 22 years of uneventful

flying

approximately 4,000 rear wheel hours 6,000 hours total 1,200 hours of rear seat instruction mostly from super puppies and my philosophy is that if you stop learning you should stop flying. Also, there's nothing else on TV, as you can see Jeff Jones here at the bottom. The left corner fell asleep last time I talked about this topic, so the same thing could happen to you, excuse me for a second, I have to make a little adjustment here and there, so I'm going to talk for a minute about um. the whole topic of zen and what it is, so my first introduction to the term zen was like for many my age, it came from robert persig's book zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance that my brother howard gave me to read at the end from the 70s. when I rode motorcycles oh oh sorry, sorry, it's my fault, my bad is right, I fixed it right, I'm sorry, where was I?

So, like I said, my first introduction to the word zen when I was still a teenager, was from uh. Borrowing Zen into the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by my brother Howard, which is still a very interesting book if you haven't read it and has almost nothing to do with motorcycle maintenance, so Zen means a lot of things to a lot of people. , technically it is a Buddhist school, but for me it is that feeling when everything comes together without much thought or that zen moment that we often hear people talk about, there are many concepts attached to zen and you will hear many different definitions but there is always room to learn more is one of those concepts, the application here is that through careful practice we can become more one with our aircraft and how we operate it.

Now let's talk about the different types of tailwheel pilots. The first is the people who just want to have the endorsement on their record are the people who occasionally rent a tailwheel airplane or have a friend who owns one and convince them to take out their insurance. I'm trying to get people to own a tailwheel airplane. airplane and then there are the tough guys from the early days who walked into dc3 alone after three hours of training and have never flown a nosewheel airplane, those are the real tailwheel pilots, now one of the great benefits of Being a Tailwhale Pilot That Many People Don't What doesn't occur to me from the beginning is living the life of a tailwhale pilot, it really is all that it seems, so let's do a quick review of some basics of the tail wheel, the center of gravity is behind you, it wants to be in front of you, that's it.

We have now covered everything there is to know about tailwheel airplanes in one slide to further demonstrate the center of gravity. This broomstick demonstration is usually one that people use to show what the process of flying a

taildragger

is. You are using quick movements. hand movements to keep the center of gravity balanced and this lady became a tailwheel pilot or at least that's a story I'll stick with, we'll talk just a minute about the privilege of flying trail drivers with tires. and that the actual regulations for flying taildraggers are very brief, the FAA says you need to know three things that are normal for crosswind takeoffs and landings, wheel landings, unless the manufacturer has recommended against making such landings, and back and forth procedures, that's all, that's all the FAA wants. you have to do now, there is clearly a lot more to know and hopefully you will learn all of that in the learning process.

Let's talk now about the dreaded ground loop. This is a very recent video of a ground loop that occurred without incident. At an airport near me, during the landing roll, the person applied heavy braking and one of the brake drums clearly released the one on the right, causing the plane to bank to the left and begin the process of a ground loop. On the ground loops I will tell you that they are often very slow and surreal and I will repeat them one more time. I think we are going slowly here. You'll hear me talk about this a little later.

I'm a firm believer that once you get to a certain point in a ground loop you should just let it happen or even help it because actions to try to recover from it could actually cause a bigger problem, for example in this case , yes you're right. The brake was still available while he was in that sharp turn. If he just hit the right brake, you could have flipped and clipped the wing, so sometimes there are a lot of loops on the ground. You can get away with more if you just let it go, so I'm going to talk a little about some facts and fiction about the ground loop.

I just want to make sure I've got it there, let's get it right, so here's the ground loop fic. A ground loop always damages the plane. Well, we just saw. that was not the case in that last video a good pilot will never do a ground loop everyone will do a ground loop there are those who have done it and those who will it is always a mechanical problem with the fiber of the plane that causes a ground loop , you can do a nose drag tail ground loop all tail wheel crashes are called ground loops, ground loops are always caused by cross winds so I think each of these things is false.

I've heard people say a nose drag or a ground loop, but most of the time it went overboard. on its nose or crashed, it did not ground again. I expect some people will disagree with me and I'm always interested in hearing different opinions on this sort of thing as we move forward, so let's talk about the causes of ground looping that I've heard. a story about each of these situations over the last year or so, the pilot cannot maintain the center of gravity behind in a crosswind. Well, we already talked about the center of gravity, it is the most important thing and we must keep it back.

We, the pilot, failed to keep the plane straight with the direction of travel at the time of landing. It is very common for a pilot to inadvertently apply a brake to one side or the other. We just saw that happen again, too: a tailwheel failure, a system failure, or a blown tire. We'll talk a little more about that in a moment, the pilot comes out of the crab at the last second to land, in other words, he's using a crab to land, uh, for a crosswind instead of a glide to land if you can. Think about what happens at the last minute: you're moving that center of gravity that's behind you very quickly before the plane lands, so you're creating some inertia there.

The other thing that's happening is with that rudder movement. the rear wheel turns a little and I've been on a tailwheel airplane where I landed in a three point and the rear wheel is clearly in a curve, so that can make the gear misalignment on the nose gear of the airplane quite interesting. plane. it may be out of alignment and cause the plane to move quite well. One of the parking brakes was left on. I know several people who have done this. They have set the parking brakes while in a grass field. The grass field probably didn't even realize the tire wasn't spinning, came back and landed on the concrete and the rest is history, so I've had some personal experience with dirt loops on this same Sesame 170 you see here during the maintenance.

The mechanic decided that the rear wheel steering arms on a Scott 3200 should be bent when in fact that's not what they were supposed to do to them, so what happened in this case is that it ruined the steering we touched. down I made a three point landing I did a very nice spin on the runway the worried controller asked us if we were okay I jumped out of the plane I looked at the tail wheel I straightened my arms and everything was fine after that so after your plane leaves maintenance, especially if it's a new place, make sure you check all these things a pacemaker pa 2220 at the time of landing in a three point landing the tire on the rear wheel exploded as soon as it exploded I knew we were spinning I'm sitting in in the right seat of this plane and I don't have side brakes because it's an old pacemaker.

I have that Johnson bar brake that I could grab, but I just sat there and said, wait for the ride and that worked. Apart from the tire on the rear wheel nothing was damaged cessna 180 my rear wheel on my cessna 180 was locking between 20 and 30 degrees due to a mechanical problem and a couple of times I circled that plane until I was smart enough to having someone fix it and then the mechanical problems get stuck, it was kind of a stuck problem where you could steer it but you couldn't steer it and that kind of thing is something you have to pay attention to and we'll talk about it a little bit. more about how important the tailwheel is and all this, none of these incidents had any additional damage to the plane and again I just want to reiterate that at a certain point I really feel like going along for the ride or helping the plane turn. once it hits that 30 or 40 degree angle and that dirt edge looks like it's going to happen, I really feel like I just ride with it, that's where I've had the most success;

Other people might not agree. I'd be interested to hear. about that so here's a short video which is actually just a clip from the video and I'll give you the name of the video so you can watch the whole thing because I actually think it's really cool it's a 60 year old movie and it talks about a a little bit about the thought process of flying and uh and some things to think about that may all seem familiar as you fly the base leg, you're calm and you're capable, but you get into the situation that you're hoping to avoid. you go to final too soon and now you must try to readjust your position to align with the track.

The old panic takes over when he enters. He is so eager to land that he turns a little high and as the plane stops he bounces he adds throttle to turn around but at that moment the plane lands again now look his feet are on the brakes the plane swerves and hits rudder and aileron to correct right brake hard down a severely damaged l19 caused by loss of directional control not caused by a guy being shaken could you help that bird dog? Sure it could if it has a weak point like being jarred around on landings.

He works on it. Many guys have apprehensive feelings. You have to defend yourself with willpower. knowledge, that's what psychologists tell the bird dog: make a small, determined attempt to control your emotions and you will always win, as the sky environmentalists say, think about what you are doing and you won't have time to think in your heart pity pat, i guess you should know about the ecology of the sky, bird dog, now let's move on to the next case, the student who was overconfident was inches away from totally destroying himself in l19 because he was too sure of himself, so he became a pretty good little video. 60 years ago, obviously, you know, we no longer see a tailrunner like the L19, but we do see a great airplane.

You can see that video. I will provide all the links later. The whole video is pretty good, but the point that I think is important in this is that when we get nervous we get stressed or we get anxious about landings or whatever we're doing on a plane that's not good, we have to get to the point. point where we can be relaxed and work on these things, so I recommend that you watch the full video. It's pretty good if you want to Google it. It's called the cessna l19 bird dogtail dragger ground loop or something like that, so we'll talk about a few now. tools, tips and other things, one of the things that all my students hear me say when there are only two of us on the plane is that everyonerelax, now my wife doesn't like when I say this, so I have to be careful when I say Sometimes it doesn't help, so what I tell them is that they should relax so that they can learn better and also so that the process goes more smoothly, so tell them to breathe deeply many times they have been holding it. your breathing the whole time we're on our last breath, relax your grip on the lever or the yoke, you know, when we're learning something new that's when we go back to those old flying habits where we held on to the yoke for dear life. or trying to get something off the stick, so let your shoulders drop if they're pressing on the bottom of your headset and one of the things I always tell people is I've never heard a pilot say "I." I just took a deep breath and relaxed and then everything fell apart, that's not how it happens, usually I was very tense, I got tense, I made the wrong move, so when things especially when conditions are difficult, cross winds, whatever Whether it's the new airport, that kind of thing, make sure you take that time to breathe deeply and relax.

You'll be surprised what a difference that can make. Now I'm going to talk a little about the toes. brakes vs. heel brakes, I'm sure I'll get some hate for this one now, so my first belief is that in all flights the brakes are overused and overrated. For some reason, in the flight training process we really emphasize the use of brakes and a lot of problems develop because of that, there are certainly situations where we are needed to steer if we are doing short landings in the field and that kind of things where we want to use maximum braking, that's great, but you know, we have an overwhelming percentage of jumps. those kinds of things are caused by braking, so I would say if your airplane has heel brakes, learn to use them instead of converting them, it's not that bad, they're not that hard to use.

One of the best things about heel brakes is that you can push them as hard as you want without being able to push the rudders as hard as you want from almost any position without any danger of hitting the bricks, they are pretty easy to avoid, on the other hand , the toe brakes are almost too easy to access on older designs like my 55 cessna 180, you really do require extra care to keep your feet off the brakes, it's very easy to use and you can go to youtube and watch half a dozen cessna 180 nose-over or 185 nose-over accidents, then you can see that they are due to excessive braking when landing.

I have landed far enough in my Cessna 180 that I can apply tail-up braking, but I always encourage people to make sure the tail is down before applying any braking. It is very difficult to hit the heel brakes without hitting the brakes. Mind you, the other thing that's very true and I've seen it so many times is that people hit the brakes in response to a bad situation, it's like an automatic response and I don't know if we're trained for that, from driving cars where someone You know, your wife may exclaim something in the right seat or your child yells at you and you suddenly brake, even though you don't even know why. you're making it so the same thing happens on an airplane and sometimes that makes these situations even worse, so the brakes are something you have to be very careful with.

I also think what I mentioned before is that on a developed ground circuit or from scratch. that's developing, the developing brakes are really the enemy, they're just going to flip the airplane over and, uh, uh, turn it on one wing if it's flowing and certainly if there's little wind, so the other thing, I want to make sure that all my students What they are thinking about is being afraid and if you look at the picture you can see by the movement of the plane that this is not the correct way to land and I think about this a lot when people use the crab kick. method, the tail wheel may be a small movement, the CG is moving and it is just a recipe for not being able to right the plane, certainly at that angle which to me looks like about 45 degrees, if you land like that it will take a small miracle to unless you're on wet grass to rescue that situation, although I've rescued some situations that were very close to that, so I think that really represents sort of the maximum salvageable position and again brakes are the enemy once.

It's going to turn, you better let it go, you want to stay longitudinally aligned with the direction of motion, so the way the plane is moving we need to be longitudinally or longitudinally aligned with that, that's the number one most important thing. In my opinion, in tailwheel flight, that's what will keep the center of gravity behind you again. Use the glide to land, don't use the crab kick, and finally, if you can't do it right, turn around or go somewhere else. I have a lot of options, there's nothing more embarrassing than cleaning up after a plane crash, so three-point wheel landings, you know, this is the old argument, um, I'm sure I'll get an alert about this too, um , but you know there's a lot to know here, so the first thing is that I firmly believe that you should be proficient in both types of landings, unless you have one of those weird planes that the FAA talks about that you can't use the earth.

I've never flown one of those. Type of airplane: I hear people who prefer wheel landings or three-point landings on this or that airplane, but I don't personally know what models they are. Wheel landings are not allowed unless it has something to do with the duration of the problem. so any of the landings should be done easily with flaps or no flaps, you should be able to do it either way and power off many times, we cheat a little on wheel landings to prolong the landing process. leave a little power, there is nothing wrong with that while you learn it, but remember that these landing tools must be available to you in an emergency situation where you may not have engine power.

You know, the biggest mistake people make. wheel landings are about forcing it, they don't flare out until landing, so I also tell people to try to imagine not landing when you're doing a wheel landing barely holding those wheels up just an inch or two. off the ground and when they touch, just gently push forward. I think the ability to land the wheel can save your bacon if you have a rear wheel problem. I've had this in a couple of situations where it can hold the tail up as much as humanly possible. Some people have lost their rear wheels and landing the wheels has helped them, obviously in the old days they landed with a rear skid so you know it may not be the worst thing in the world but certainly if you have a completely rear wheel . out of control, you know, having the ability to hold your tail up or use a wheel to land could be useful, so I'm adamant on this, unless you're an expert or close to an expert, never use the brakes until the tail is on the ground. and the sticky bud is firmly back, you want it all the way back before braking today we were landing on a super cub uh at one point it was a really variable wind, occasionally it would be a tailwind and a The crosswind was just nine knots or so, but you could feel when that wind got behind you as you came in and landed a three-point landing and without having that tail pinned down, a little bit of bricks could have made a big difference.

I'm in a hurry, finally, if there's a strong crosswind, I'm a wheel landing guy, uh, again, I think this is really a personal preference. I've known guys that could do beautiful three-point landings and huge crosswinds or essentially two-point landings on the right wheel and the tailwind or the left wheel on the tailwheel um and you know, I don't have that skill for myself. , I like to have a little more speed, really be able to feel what the wind is doing and uh, and that's why I tend to choose crosswind wheelies, um, but I think it's a personal preference and I really think that everyone should be able to do both well, speaking of cross plans, we'll talk a little about some zen cross winds here.

So, um, I think about crosswinds, I think about uh, my plane is like a boat on the river, so you know, the plane is kind of a strange space for us, but boats, you know, are quite an analogy. common to be able to how we. Keeping corrections and that kind of thing on a boat when we're trying to cross a river or go upstream or downriver, it gives us a good example of how it works, so again everyone, just relax, you know we need to relax. and uh and uh control ourselves instead of stabbing in the corrections I see people all the time stabbing pushing the right stick a little bit and releasing the right stick and releasing the rudder a little bit releasing that kind of thing uh that's not the way to Do so place the correction gently and hold it there.

Now it will continually change as you go, that correction will change all the time, you'll have to make adjustments to it, but you want to keep that straight plane as you go. If you are entering into crosswinds or exiting into crosswinds and only make small corrections, then you want to train and practice to be confident in your ability and you can minimize crosswinds by using something non-standard, you can use the stick on the surfaces. a non-standard way, so in flight training we are all trained to enter and land on the center line, so everyone is like the center line, the center line, the center, if you are going to be an airline pilot, You want to land on the center line, but if you have a big crosswind and you have a 75 or 100 foot wide runway, why not cross that runway at a 45 degree angle?

If you have enough space to take off, you have significantly minimized your crosswind. component setting that angle there, so if you have a strong critical right crosswind, start on the left side of the runway because these airplanes are going to weather the vein if they have tailwheels, so they're going to shoot to the right , so that gives you a little bit more time to make a correction there, so I personally prefer a right crosswind if I have the option, it's a uh, it's a little bit easier, the plane has left turn tendencies , there has been some disagreement. about that from other people too, but for me, if it's a direct crosswind, I'd rather put it on the right and remember to put the corrections in that the plane asks not necessarily what the windsock says if you've been to a lot of airports that have multiple windsocks and particularly with buildings and things around and the airport that we fly out of here in Bentonville very frequently like today, the two windsocks at each end of the field we're doing completely different things, uh, they trigger the gap in this airport.

Up on the hill to the east is another place where the two Wind Sox rarely agree and that's why there are two of them, so do what the plane asks if the left wing approaches even if the Wind Sox says that. it would be the right wing that should go up, I think you should lower the left wing with a little movement of the stick or the yoke, so remember the internal dialogue, so use the right force, so talk to yourself, talk to yourself same. The process also remembers getting back to number one. You really want to relax if you think about visualization and what and what professional athletes do.

You know if it's Tiger Woods or whoever, when they're getting ready for whatever they're going to do. They don't come up and say, well, you know, I'll probably do really poorly today, but I don't see any way I'm going to win this race or this round of golf or I'll probably be five strokes over par in this. hole or whatever, I'm sure Tiger Woods said that every time you went up to the uh green or the t box, but that's not what you can do, you know what you have to do is convince yourself that you can. do this well, talk to yourself, know what you are doing and don't get too confident, but be aware and visualize a good result if you can visualize the result you want and not get carried away by the negative result which is flying off the track and cross in front or something like that, but if you visualize how it will turn out correctly, you will be much better off and you will have a much better chance of success, so the word expert, well, we'll just go and talk about it so malcolm gladwell, many of you probably read his book Outliers, he has a theory that an expert is someone who has done something for ten thousand hours, well, I mean, I think a lot of holes have been poked in this. theory uh, for me I have six thousand hours, four thousand hours of tailwheel flight.

I am by no means an expert by your definition or mine, but you know there are 30,000 pilots of our airlines, they may have less landing experience than a thousand. hour person who never leaves the pattern are experts so I don't know but it's good to think about experience so I think the type of practice and training you do is really important for that's whatIt matters to become better pilots. your tailwheel pilots or any type of pots. I'm also a big believer in visualization, this is visualization, like I just said, practicing in your head, you know, taking a break from training to give yourself time to reflect and build on what you've learned properly.

So find an instructor and challenge yourself to the next

level

. You know most of us don't have the luxury of learning things the hard way in aviation. We all know some people who have the means to learn on their own. I've put a lot of mileage on some airplanes and I've done it so you know that most of us have to go with an instructor or take a slightly different, slightly more experienced or reasoned approach to the training process and studies show that Despite what mom says that practice doesn't make things perfect, it's just not the right kind of practice, so once you start thinking that you know it all or God's gift of flying, in my opinion, you're really walking into a dangerous church and yes I've already told myself that if I've ever felt that way I'm going to stop climbing uh luckily I feel less and less skilled as I get older so I don't think that is going to happen.

The next thing you should do is always check your six, that little one behind you in line. The wheel turns out to be a pretty important thing, it turns out that the geometry matters too. There are a number of resources available that can help you ensure that the rear wheel is mounted correctly. We are all familiar with the rear wheel. sway when there's too much weight where the spring jumps in the back and uh so just keep an eye on the rear wheel geometry so all the ground loops I experienced personally involved the problem with the tail wheel and I have witnessed ground loops caused by failures of some of these experimental and novel tailwheel systems, so I know there are a number of them out there, I'm not saying they are all bad, some of them seem too good to be true and I recently saw a ground loop with one of those systems failing and I would just say you know the old scott 3200 and the old mall and some of these devices are pretty solid options so if you're going to use one of these newer things, especially pay attention after each landing.

I'd probably go out and take a look at it. Make sure everything continues to work well until you feel really comfortable with how it works. Do the prescribed maintenance on your towel wheels. You know there is an excellent video. Several videos from Steve Pearce on rear wheel maintenance and how to rebuild Scott and Tail wheels. and i really think it's worth taking the time to do, so at last night's opa presentation that we were involved in, you know, amy hoover made a very interesting comment about cleaning your plane and that when you come home after of a flight and she takes, she cleans her entire plane and one of the things that happens in that process is you really take a good look at things so you have time to look at the tail wheel or you have time to look at everything that might have happened while you're away. . having mud and everything else taped together, so, very good, very good advice from Amy.

It's something I should keep in mind since I clean my plane every three years. One last thing when I started working at the flight school here in Bentonville. I had to be checked on airplanes for flight school by high school instructors and I noticed that all the instructors who checked me when they were pre-flighting the airplane got down on their knees. and they put their head under the rear wheel and confirmed that there was a cotter pin on the bottom of the type of piece that holds the yoke on the top of the rear wheel and I finally said, "Okay, guys, what happened?" , they said well.

One day we took off after the event and plane maintenance and when we landed there was no tailwheel so someone hadn't put a cotter pin in and left it there, so it's not something I check every time, but I certainly look more. than ever before just because someone had that problem, so always try to learn from other people's mistakes or their learning experiences if you can, so there are some other things to think about, you know, if you're new to fly in general. think in terms of pressure control, not motion control, just like you do in a car, if you used some of those jerky movements that some people use on the yoke and stick in their car, no one would ride with you because everyone would get dizzy.

In the car, the same thing happens with the brakes many times, for some reason, people who could perfectly brake the brakes of a car when it stops think that the brakes of an airplane are an on and off device that are on or off . When you are using the rudders in any situation, try to put a little pressure on both rudder pedals when you do so, this will give you the ability to feel the response of the other rudder. When you press it, it will allow you to do a little more. uh gentle and smaller corrections again visualize successful results no don't think about the negatives if you're going to fail you're probably going to fail so let's not think that way again there's no more uh going around more embarrassing than breaking it on a plane, I can't reiterate that enough, we have most of us, many of us, especially people who are upcountry, you know, people get excited, uh, when they fly in a group with other people. and uh, that's really a moment where your adrenaline starts moving, it's really a time to take a deep breath, back up a minute, maybe do another trip around the pattern before you try to do something, uh, just to get your wits back about you and you.

You know when you're wondering if I have something to prove why I'm doing this you know why I'm doing this buddy there's some reason I have to do this sometimes you know sometimes it's just because it's fun and there's nothing wrong with that, but but sometimes it's better not to do some things and like mom said, just because Jimmy jumped in the lake doesn't mean you have to jump in the lake, so I have some resources I want to talk about for new and old wheel racers. cola, my favorite book. uh the book of the tail wheel is the book of the floor or also called the yellow book, the complete pilot of the tail dragon.

You can get it on Amazon. Still, Harvey has been gone for several years, but the family or someone is still producing the book. We use it as a standard in our training. Here, uh, it's not a difficult read and it's just that it has more information than most of us need, it has some technical aspects that aren't as important to me as all the other things it covers, so it's really good. book if you haven't read it or seen it, it's worth reading. There are a lot of really good YouTube videos on tailwheel flying and there are also a lot of really bad YouTube videos on tailwheel flying, so be sure.

To look at both of them and figure out which one works best for your needs and when multiple videos agree on a certain type of thing, then maybe you better understand that that's the right thing to do, so, uh. I'm almost always interested in new resources that people find useful when flying, whether it's books or certain videos or that kind of thing, and I've always hoped that someone could create a sort of Clearinghouse of all this kind of stuff where we could all go and see everything they know. Here are the really good videos on the topic and that kind of stuff.

So, uh, I do it. I am also interested in receiving comments on this. So some other great resources, again, Steve Pierce's rear wheel video, from our maintenance standpoint, search for scott alaska bush wheel rear wheel assembly and on youtube there, and you can find it , check out Patrick Roman's stole tips videos from backcountry aviation if you're interested in backcountry flying and stall flying, he really has some solid videos and I think it's backcountryaviation.com uh lucas menley uh one of the instructors here at uh fly oz uh have a great set of videos on landings that have been I'm trying to get one out about once a month and we're a little behind right now because he's busy doing a lot of other flights, but those They're on flyouts.com if you want to check them out and they're really cool.

The things that Dick Williams and Amy Hoover did last night were part of the presentation and they talked about their other book, their field flying book, which is a great resource, really the new Fairport Bible in the field, but the most Dick's new one called Stolen in a Supercub also has a bit about Zen flying, which I think you'll enjoy too. This is truly a treasure trove of experiences and ways of thinking about flying and I encourage you to get that book. Well, I think the only source right now is through Amazon, so there are a lot of great places that do great tailwheel and backcountry training all over the country.

There are many of them, so treat yourself and learn something new. Finally use multiples. resources when you learn from YouTube you quickly read the good from the bad so friends that's it it's time to ask questions and throw tomatoes so I'm going to come back here for this little mode here and do it right so let's see oh here. We have some chat questions here, I'm going to get my ass kicked, those are the Red Bull girls, that's right, look at that, okay, no questions, you guys are awesome, wait, let me get this out of the way so I can see if we have YouTube. questions, there you have it, alright, listen guys, if no one has any other questions, that would be awesome.

I appreciate your time tonight and we look forward to seeing you. I don't know what will happen in June, as I mentioned before. I'll get to that question, Tom, wait, I don't know what's going on in June, but let's figure it out. If anyone has any good ideas let me know so Tom Wilds asks what the difference in technique is between a three point wheel doesn't land so the approach is exactly the same in my opinion a lot of people think you have to fly one different approach, you have to use different flap settings and that sort of thing, the main difference is that at the end of the minute instead of pulling the stick all the way back until all three wheels touch in a full stall and the stars are align and everything else which by the way never happens to me, once those main wheels touch first very gently while you're in a flare, you're moving the stick forward and going up to the net, so that's the way to make the perfect landing with the wheel, which again never did anything, well, another question, flaps vs no flaps for real landings, it doesn't matter, I use full flaps for the wheels. landings all day uh today we were practicing without flaps just because of the strange wind learn how to do it in all the different configurations there is uh there is no reason for or against some people think that some airplanes land better with flaps without flaps uh there it is a supercab that I have flown recently and it is a little difficult to get it to three points with full flaps because, due to the size of the tires, it is difficult to lower the tail and one of the things that you will find with larger and more tired airplanes, sometimes you stay no lift a little bit to get the tail down enough to really get into the three point attitude, that those things are set up for one wheel airspeed versus three point. wow I have great great questions um no really there is no real difference again the approach is the same it all has to do with how much you are widening and how close to the ground you are so remember that in a wheel landing you are widening. up to your touch and then you're applying a little forward pressure on the yoke again and one thing also about wheel landings, let me mention is that when the FAA came out with their information on how to do wheel landings at the end, they Let's say hold the yoke all the way forward until the tail drops and then pull the stick back, so I don't agree with that and I think anyone who has flown a large warbird, not me, but anyone who has called a great warbird would not agree to dropping its tail. uh, at the last minute, instead of flying it to the ground when there is a little less, it can be a thrill ride, so I suggest that at the end, when you have a little energy in your tail, you go ahead and fly it down with the lever or the yellow.

I've never had the trim wheel brake on a Sky Wagon Dick and I hope I never do, but the Skyway is a slightly sleeker and happier airplane. Very well, friends again, thank you all for being there. Thank you very much here, we hope to see you in a month and we may see you at some events coming up, next weekend, after this is the big Minnesota aviation meeting, Randy Corbin, see you there at the corner and he looks. very relaxed for a guy who is organizing a gigantic event in Minnesota in just over a week, but that's how he rolls, verywell, thanks again, friends.