The first thing I did after getting my PPL (flying 172s and PA28s) was go and get my tail wheel endorsement in a Citabria, and then do a basic aerobatics course. I learn SO much about aircraft handling on the ground, and in the air. 15 years later I regularly go and rent the Citabria for a bit of stick and rudder practice, and some tail wheel fun. I just love it!
Good on you for doing that. I wish there was a Citabria or Decathlon for rent here at my home airport for an occasional fun flight and to stay proficient. - Martin
I am right at the end of my tailwheel endorsement training. I have learned so much and I am happy I did it. Much respect for the guys that fly these all the time. Thanks for a great video.
My tailwheel check out was towing gliders, Did 5 take off's and landings and was towing solo. Love tailwheel aircraft. Have even 3 pointed a DC3 to the surprise of the PIC, did it before he even realized what I was doing. Softest landing in a 3 that I ever had.
! ! ! AWESOME ! ! ! What a Heck of Opportunity To Fly With Captain Doug ! I Started My Flights On A P-56C, My Dear Paulistinha, In Bragança Paulista SBBP, SP. Today I See How Delightful and Frightening, at The Same Time, Were the Instruction Flights. And You Brought These Beautiful Memories In This Video. Besides the Beautiful Place (How Beautiful Mason City is) Something Very Characteristic was the Manual Airplane Start. This Was the "Standard Procedure" For the P-56C. Thank You Very Much Martin for Another Great and Important Video. By The Way, THIS IS THE REAL DEAL ! This Is THE FOUNDATION For ALL THE APPROACHES (Precision and Non Precision) ! The Foundation For The Famous JFK’s Visual Canarsie Approach RWY 13L or Bogota’s Visual Approach RWY 31L/R, Among Many Others All Over The World ! ! ! ! EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY ! ! ! For You and We All, Your Viewrs ! Many Thanks ! Best Regards ! Please, Send My Best For Captain Doug 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙏🏻🌿
Hello Martin: Saw a link to your crosswind technique video today on Beechtalk and decided to check it out. Was rewarded with these two great videos you and Doug Rosendaal put together a few years back. They were a great refresher for flying my P35 Bonanza. And they took me back to my taildragger flying days too. Thank you! And what a great CFI Doug Rosendaal is. Very professional yet down to earth. By the way...I flew to Cedar Rapids a couple of years ago to fly with you as part of BPPP. I much appreciated your expertise and the pointers provided. Take care: Nick Wynen
This cracks me up, this video was suggested, first clip I thought, “hey that looks like KMCW, hey that looks like Doug” then then I was like, “that’s Doug’s hangar and Marks 🦫!” Way too cool! Thanks for sharing Martin!
Danke fuer the videos on tailwheel training. I took my first hour of towards a tailwheel endorsement today and it was both fun and challenging. It definitely helps you develop skills between the art of flying and command of the airplane. Also, Mr. Rozendaal was the DPE for my private pilot certificate. I'll never forget that day. He was a great DPE.
I started flying gliders at 14 years, moved to motor gliders and finally powered planes. My father had a tailwheel plane prior to me getting the PPL A license. I flew her a lot from the right seat, a lot of tail wheel TMG‘s too. When I did training for PPL I thought that my experience on gliders (and TMG’s of course) helped a lot to handle planes correctly quite fast. It even made landings with tricycle gear planes more easy, get them down more smoothly and gentle. It also helped me keeping an extra eye on speed, touching down just at the right velocity. Fun fact: as my home airfield was a bit of a bumpy grass strip, take off‘s and landings with one certain kind of motor glider could result into several jumps. It was essential to have the right speed. Great training for sure. Your video is a very good compilation how to fly tail wheelers, you did very well. Doug is a great instructor, both in theoretical and practical teaching. He made it very easy to understand the different aspects and different procedures when flying tail wheel airplanes. Thank you for posting this great content!
Thank you for the detailed feedback. You are right - what we learn in gliders and tailwheel airplanes certainly helps fly tricycle gear airplanes as well with more finesse. - Martin
Awesome instructor. Asks questions that keep you thinking as you learn. So many people shut off their minds when learning something new and seem to forget what they already knew instead of building on those previous skills.
I remember my old instructor saying to me when I bounced a landing "Don't sit there as a passanger, do something before we arrive at the seen of a crash". The norm with the Chipmunk was to apply power and rest ot go around, if you just left it, it got bad fairly fast.
Hey Martin. I watch these two videos when you first released them, but have just now started my tail wheel training. It is a ton of fun and proving to be quite an education. Thanks for the great content!
Great channel, I like that you are sincere and don't try to act like a youtube persona. A lot of aviation channels are packed with stupidity or people pretending they are experts but yours is very real. I really enjoyed Martin's dry style of instruction also, seems like the kind of bloke I could have a beer with. So, from one glider pilot to another, Hals und Beinbruch!
Nice video. It's about time that someone mentioned that adverse yaw is a good thing. It's one of the most important things I teach for tailwheel endorsements, especially when your rudder effectiveness diminishes when lowering the tail after a wheel landing (or, like my Cessna 195 that is marginal in low speed rudder authority to begin with)
Great video. Well sequenced instruction. Only thing I would add is to explain some scenarios where things go wrong. Example, short field T/O w right X-wind ---> what happens if throttle is adanced too quickly and tail brought up too quickly. Precession can bite you.
Thanks much for sharing this Martin, and very nice job!! I would listen to Doug's voice of experience at any chance I got!! I've shared "the drill" many, many times! Looking forward to the next one. 8) --gary
I have almost 400 hrs in tail wheels and at the end of the video during the instructors de-brief I had a light bulb go off in my head about adverse yaw!!! I understand now how lowering the wing on the windward side during a crosswind landings will helps in other ways than just keeping the wind from getting under the wing and lifting the plane up. I now understand that using aileron into the the wind will help to swing the nose of the plane into the wind using adverse yaw in your favor. Outstanding.
I love when I can help trigger that light bulb moment in people, Jimmie. You got it exactly right, and for some strange reason this is a part of deflecting the aileron on take-off and landing which is rarely taught. "Stick to the ditch" is how Doug called it, opposite of what you would do in a car and thus not intuitive to do unless you really think about it, like you have. 👏 Best, Martin
@@jimmiemiles2901 Doug is fantastic, Jimmie. Extremely knowledgable, and also very willing to share what he has learned with the pilot community. When Doug speaks, I listen carefully, and I always learn something.
I'm a TW instructor. This is instructing the way it should be done. excellent work! Most pilots today don't really know how to use the rudder. Tailwheel training fixes that. Your coordination will be better, cross wind landings are a snap and you'll be much better at stick and rudder skills. nice job!
Thanks, Robert. I agree, the rudder is lost on many pilots today. Something I miss from my days of teaching in gliders is how impactful the demonstration of adverse yaw is, thanks to the glider's wingspan and the long arm for the forces in play. Try doing that in a Cirrus, and it's hard to even see what I'm talking about. Regards, Martin
If 27 years of J-3 ownership has taught me anything it's that wind drift is corrected with aileron, and the aircraft is kept aligned with the runway center line with rudder. Period. Even if the two corrections leave you cross controlled, which is normal. Keep the stick coming back all the way through the flare, and never pump it forward if you bounce. Small bounce? Flare again and land. Big bounce? Add power and go around, or stabilize and land again. I never wheel land, because in a three point touchdown, the aircraft is finished flying and all you have to do is control the rollout. "Nail" the tail by applying full aft elevator (if you're not there already) when the tailwheel is on the ground. A CFI.
That was hilarious, watching you trying to hold center, (knowing that you're such a good pilot in your Bonanza). It reminded me of my initial flight training, landings, etc. Great Video. Excellent Instructor. Thanks!
Thanks for taking us along with you in your traildragger journey, Martin! I already thought it would be harder to learn than tri-cycle. This gives great insights. Really appreciate all of Doug's explanations edited in too. What's it like to have the throttle on the left in this typical aircraft, or is it already an advantage and normal for you, as you're as a CFI already used to right seat flying? Happy landings from Die Niederlände!
Such a fascinating video. It really makes you wonder whether or not all students and I’m talking about neophytes seeking flight training would be better off being tied in a Taildragger ab initio. You really learn stick and Rudder and true control of an airplane from the very beginning. Fascinating thought. Don’t think any of the manufactures are going to be producing Taildragger trainers anytime soon.
Realistically, that's unlikely to happen, Allan - but it shouldn't stop pilots from seeking some tailwheel experience at some later point. It's healthy attitude for a pilot to always look for new things to learn, and tailwheel flying is a great candidate for that, no matter how long you've been flying. - Martin
Hey Martin. Great work with Doug. I currently teach tail wheel but was looking around to see how others do it and I appreciate you showing us your training. Doug had a lot to offer and you had obviously got some preparation in beforehand (as any good student should). Great stuff.
I really loved the adverse yaw demo in this one. There's a large percentage of pilots that haven't experienced that or just don't understand it. Great video, Martin. You and Doug might be the next John and Martha. :)
Excellent video, martin, and a great follow up to the ground school one. It helps that you also had a terrific instructor. I can't wait for the follow up videos. Good luck and thanks for posting
Thanks Martin for bringing back some fond memories. 3 years ago, I bought a Cessna 140a just for me and my son to get our tail wheel endorsements. Lots of fun!
Thats great! I didnt quite get my TW rating, I had abou 9.5 hrs with a great CFI at an "away field". He had a Piper J5-A which is a tandem plane as well, but can be solo'd from the front. It had a C-75 engine do it had an electrical system, starter, radio, transponder. It had the bungee landing gear so it kind of made a racket landing. I was doing okay but, work, weather, etc., kind of hampered me. Its great fun tho!
Nice job Martin. You did very good but were honest about what you need to improve on. You will have it pretty well after a few more sessions. I didn't know you had glider time before. That's cool. Thanks for letting us watch as you learn something new.
Excellent video. Reminds me of doing my tail wheel training in a Citabria 7eca almost 30 years ago. Like float flying the most fun you can have while being the most proficient. 👍👍
Just like part 1 a fantastic video. Feel like I learned a lot. Only difference is in my airplane, an acro sport 2, I have to come in a lot higher because the drag of an open cockpit biplane will put me short of the field if the fan up front quits providing my cooling. (-: I wish I would have discovered this video when I started my endorsement.
I hope you have more tail wheel videos with Doug in the very near future. I want to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and safe and HEALTHY New Year.
Awesome video! Great trining and the flight instructor was so confident and calm, it really transmitted control over the entire flight ! Great content to share ! Saludos from Chile !
....reliving my tailwheel training. Good reminders and a few new pointers. I never held aileron to take advantage of adverse yaw in a crosswind, but always did as needed to keep the upwind wing from being lifted. The ailerons are doing double duty for me without my thinking about that aspect.
Great job Martin! Wished I'd of picked it up as fast as you seem to. My first set of landings I managed to flatten the tailwheel on the Citabria I was flying. Picking up the tailwheel endorsement was a great accomplishment for me. Haven't flown one in years, need to do that.
Martin a really good video,you are to be commended for wanting to add a tailwheel endorsement to your flying skills,the Taylorcraft is a lovely aircraft despite its age it has everything you need to learn how to fly taildraggers. In my fathers Army Air Corps training on the Arnold scheme in 1941 on Stearman's it mentions the falling leaf being practised and noted in his log book so if it was good enough for the Army Air Corps to practise then so be it. You have a great instructor there,enjoyed every minute of your video,thank you.
Great video, Martin, thanks for showing us your experience. I did my 3rd tail wheel training flight today in an RV8. I have a hard time not rounding out too high, as well as with the gyroscopic precession as the tail lowers on the roll out, but every flight is better!
Really easy rule for ALL landings, esp. Xwind is; Maintain AILERONS PROPORTIONALY & OPPOSITE the needed rudder. NOTE that this is counter intuitive to recovering car from skidding turns. Car, we turn wheel INTO the skid. Plane the wheel or stick is opposite the swerve, and the adverse yaw created will assist the rudder with direction control. This works because rudder being vertical and small, easily stalls out as relative wind moves to the xwind component as plane slows. HOWEVER: AILERONS being 2 to 4 times the surface area of the wee rudder AND horizontal to the relative wind, continues to provide ADVERSE YAW to assist the rudder & tw stearing, even as plane slows to taxii speed.
Nice job Rozy. : ) But I wouldn't expect anything less. Well Martin, I just bought a 1946 C140. (Restoration Project!!) Now I just have to learn how to fly it! LOL Maybe I'll finally see you at AirVenture this year. Though I'll probably be working on the C140, along with everything else. = O
You keep saying we'll meet one day, but then it never happens. 🤣 It would be my pleasure to buy you a drink of your choice at AirVenture this summer! Good luck with the restoration project - and with learning to fly. That makes TWO big projects! - Martin