Tailwheel Introduction and Lesson Plans

Inherent Instability

Center of Gravity, Pivot Point

The most important concept you need to grasp right away is that the center of gravity in a tailwheel is behind the main gear. In a tricycle gear, the center of gravity is in front of the main gear.

This fact has allowed you, up to this point, to land with a handful of degrees yawed to the right or left because as you touch down a tricycle gear aircraft is forced to straighten itself out automatically. This may seem like a great feature but all it’s really done is allow you to get away with sloppily landing without much concern for whether or not you’re aligned with the runway.

Those days are over, and until you are able to finesse the rudders into being perfectly aligned with the runway, you won’t be landing. If you attempt to land without perfect alignment, the tailwheel aircraft won’t automatically correct itself, it’ll swing the tail out and result in a ground loop.

A ground loop is unavoidable once the tail yaws greater than the width of the main wheels track, so there is, practically speaking, very little margin of error. A ground loop is avoided by applying full power and going around; trying to salvage a less than ideal touchdown will only result in bent metal, regardless of your skill level. If, for some reason, you’ve gotten it in your head that a go around is some kind of failure, you need to recondition your mind to see go arounds as, instead, an exercise in good judgement.

Lastly, the pivot point is the main gear, which is significantly further forward than in a tricycle gear, weather veining will be more pronounced as a result.

Remember, a go around is the default; if you’re perfectly aligned with the runway, go ahead and land.

An Assortment of Left Yawing Tendencies

A tailwheel aircraft sits at high pitch / angle of attack on the ground; this fact results in significantly more yaw than you’re used into in a tricycle gear right off the bat.

P-factor in a tailwheel aircraft, a propeller effect where the angle of attack differs from the top of the stroke to the bottom, is significantly greater because the nose is pitched up before you even advance the throttle. P-factor results in a left yawing tendency, it can only be countered with right rudder.

Torque (engine) is the result of the rotational force of the engine (and propeller) as it turns to the right (from the pilot’s perspective) that has the effect of pulling the plane up and to the left. The effect can only be countered by applying right rudder.

Gyroscopic Precession is a well understood but technically complex property of applying force to the sides of a spinning disk, the propeller for our purposes. For our purposes though, we can safely think of it as a kind of torque similar to the previous paragraph but different in that it can be greatly mitigated. Any external force applied to the sides of a spinning disk, creates new, additional torque; the slower the force is applied, the less dramatic the torque. All this means for our purposes is that we need to gently lift the tail on take off; an abrupt lift of the tail results in a left yawing tendency.

Spiraling Slipstream depends largely on the aircraft, the bigger the engine, the greater the effect. As the propeller turns fast and you’re going slow, it creates a corkscrew, spiraling effect that eventually works its way back and slams into the vertical stabilizer yawing the aircraft to the left. If you haven’t guessed by now, the only solution is to apply right rudder.

Aileron Misuse, adverse yaw will occur when you mistakenly try to turn the ailerons to straighten yourself out. Ailerons will not turn the aircraft when you’re on the ground, they will only make a yawing tendency worse because you’ve introduced drag on the wing as one aileron goes up and the other goes down, otherwise known as adverse yaw . This is not to be confused with purposely holding the ailerons into a crosswind, but again, will require opposite rudder to offset.

Technique

Rudder Pedals

In case it’s not self evident at this point, you will be on the rudders at all times. The days of using them as a footrest as you may have in a tricycle gear are no longer. Sadly, tricycle geared aircraft have allowed multiple generations of new pilots to de-emphasize the importance of rudders.

Of course, all aircraft require superior rudder skill to stay coordinated and especially as the winds pick up so the net result of this fact is that you really do need good rudder skill no matter what aircraft you’re flying but only taildraggers require them at all times and in all environments. Learning to fly a taildragger ultimately helps you address this critical deficiency by forcing it to be part of your intuitive nature while flying.

One exercise I use myself, to this day, is waking your feet up on final; as you get stabilized on final, cycle the rudders a few times to get your legs loose and ready to finesse the rudders. Some students, for reasons beyond the scope of this introduction, hold tension in one of their legs and it becomes as stiff as a wooden plank. Clearly that will be a problem when you attempt to land, loosen them up.

Remember, the optimal word here is finesse. Rudder inputs should be small and frequent, similar to balancing a stick in your hand; over correction makes it worse, under correction causes it to fall.

As detailed earlier, assume yaw when applying power, you need to always be a half a step ahead.

Sight Picture

A correct sight picture is described a lot of different ways, “look at the end of the runway”, “look down range,” etc but those explanations miss the mark in my opinion because they’re getting you to shift your focus, when what you should really be doing is a type of unfocus. If you’re staring at the runway, as you get closer it will become a blank sheet of paper, there’s not enough detail there to establish your height.

Your eyes didn’t evolve operating at 70 knots, so you have to widen and extend your view out to the full environment to determine how high you are off the ground. Next time you’re driving at a decent speed, briefly look down at dashed lane separators on the ground next to you; they’re just a blur and without the intuitive knowledge of your height sitting in a car, you wouldn’t have a clue if they’re 3 feet or 30 feet away.

Stand in front of a single story building and take note of what you can see, likely just the front facade and nothing more. Now imagine that you’re 30 feet up on a ladder, what happens to your view of the building? It takes on a three dimensional box shape, the shape of the building changes as you get higher or lower.

When landing, your entire operating environment on the ground is changing its shape as you get lower; obviously you must not look away at some object in your peripheral vision in the flare, so the only option is to look at them all simultaneously, literally everything in your periphery. Granted, focusing on a single object makes it much clearer to see but you don’t want singular visual clarity in the flare, you need a summary of everything. Think about how you drive in a multilane’d highway; you’re not constantly working on keeping yourself centered between the lines by looking directly in front of your car at both lanes, in fact you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it. What’s keeping you centered is the information being picked up by your peripheral vision and a largely unconscious response keeping yourself centered.

Try a visual exercise: sit down and look forward, without moving your eyes, call out objects in your field of view, get used to what this feels like; it can only be described as widening your focus to include everything, though at the cost of clear focus. Once you can just barely make out everything, you’re there. From here practice on going into that mode at will. Again, don’t expect to see everything clearly, you just need to be conscious of everything, it’s the only way to tell how high you are off the deck.

Go back to the top and read this again.

Lesson Plans

Lesson 1, Airwork and Coordination

  • Review concepts:
    • Center of gravity
    • You are the connection between the stick and rudders, they move together
    • Input, then relax, input, then relax
    • Sight picture / unfocus, only way to tell how high you are is to see everything
    • Grass v. Concrete
    • S-turns if necessary
    • Dragging a brake while taxiing to tighten a turn
    • High deck angle means the plane will mostly take off on it’s own, don’t “rotate” by yanking back on the stick/yoke like you would in a skyhawk, gyroscope effect will make for a more significant yawing tendency to the left
    • Workload increases significantly as you touch down, cannot relax
  • Demonstrate taking off on one wheel to show how rudders are part of the equation when it comes to yaw
  • Airwork, are we coordinated in a turn? Are we using the rudder at all? Input and relax, never hold an input in (unless slipping, rudders for climb, etc)
  • My Airplane exercises at altitude, hands up feet back, “Your Airplane”
  • First landing, wake those feet up, 15’ take half the angle out slowly, aim for height of a person (6’) and “keep it flying”

Lesson 2

  • Fast taxi exercises, stay on centerline first. Progress to stutter stepping back and forth, 5-10’ off the centerline. Don’t “happy feet” the rudders to death, adjustments are made as needed
  • 3 point landings, Go Around is the default, only land if stabilized, perfectly straight
  • Full power will get you out of anything
  • Full power will yaw most taildraggers, anticipate it with right rudder
  • Gyroscope effect will also yaw, don’t yank on the stick too fast

Lesson 3

  • Wake your feet up on final
  • 3 point landings until you can do them unassisted
  • 15’ take half the angle out slowly, aim for height of a person (6’), now keep it flying..
  • Or, cut your sight picture in half horizontally, at 15' slowly pitch up to get rid of it

Lesson 4

  • Wheel landings, touch the mains and either relax the stick or push it forward depending on the aircraft
  • Keep the tailwheel up and let it fall on it’s own, then stick full back.

Lesson 5

  • Crosswinds, wing down moves some of the air over the top and not into the fuselage
  • You move with the air mass, you’re a part of it
  • Wing down flies you into the drift, top rudder, it’s technically a slip
  • What is weather veining? Why is it more pronounced in a taildragger?
  • Extreme crosswind, approach at a 45 degree angle into the wind to take advantage of the stability of a side slip. Work your way up to higher crosswinds, anything above 10 knots is going to require a superior 100+ hour skill level.

Lesson 6

  • Everything, unassisted
  • Must be able to demonstrate landing in an actual crosswind of greater than 7 knots
  • Remember: No Matter What Happens, Fly the Airplane..
  • Sign off, don’t fly in anything above 10 knots until your confidence is there.
  • An endorsement doesn’t expire but a skill set does, keep active.

The vast majority of this content was indirectly provided by Damian DelGaizo during my years training with him. He owns and operates Andover Flight Academy just outside of NYC. Checkout his Tailwheel 101 and Tailwheel 201 videos.