Unusual Attitude: Tailwheel Test

Tailwheel training has long been one of my favorite flight subjects. It’s dynamic, challenging, and rewarding. For pilots aspiring to fly vintage aircraft, warbirds, backcountry adventurers, or aerobats, a tailwheel endorsement is the coin of the realm. But what’s the best way for an instructor to give new tailwheel pilots the foundation they need?

That question seldom occurred to me during my first few years of providing dual instruction. The flight school where I taught had exactly one tailwheel airplane—a Super Decathlon—and most trainees were aspiring aerobatic pilots who simply wanted to meet the FAA requirement and get Decathlon checkouts as quickly as possible. We’d grind around the airport traffic pattern until they made consistently smooth takeoffs and landings, had confidence in their abilities, and I felt good about their prospects. That process generally took about eight or 10 flight hours, at least 75 takeoffs and landings, a pair of Goodyear Flight Custom IIIs, and a set of brake pads. We’d spend most of our time and effort on wheel landings—those tricky touchdowns in which the airplane’s two main wheels contact the runway first, followed by the tailwheel.

More recently, however, teaching mostly in backcountry airplanes has fundamentally changed the way I teach tailwheel flying. Tailwheel students who learn in a Piper PA–18 Super Cub, Cessna 180 Skywagon, or Aviat Husky, for example, often have a great deal to learn about the operational environment in which these aircraft are meant to fly—and simply showing them how to make wheel and three-point landings on hard-surface runways doesn’t prepare them to meet their flying goals.

Instead of making endless circuits in the local traffic pattern, I now take them to a variety of grass runways in the area (see “Sod Season,” p. 34). And instead of emphasizing wheel landings, I now focus on the three-point variety because they’re better for short, rough, or obstructed airstrips.

The culmination of the training is a three-airport “tailwheel final exam” that tests their ability to handle real-world challenges. First, we drop in at a short, lumpy farm airstrip that blends in with the surrounding countryside. Just finding it can be difficult, and it requires flying a curved final approach because of trees and terrain, overflying a power line, and missing a mud bog. The actual landing and takeoff are the easy parts.

Next, we fly to Clearview Airpark, a rite of passage for pilots in the mid-Atlantic for its 1,840-foot long, 30-foot wide, paved runway with a 2.1-degree grade (see “That One Airport,” May 2019 Flight Training). The unusual sight picture confounds pilots and leads to a high percentage of go-arounds.

Finally, we return to Frederick, Maryland, where backcountry pilots must fit their airplanes into the mix of faster traffic and deal with air traffic controllers.

A successful tailwheel final exam puts an exclamation point on the training cycle. But as an instructor, my definition of success differs sharply from that of my students. They want perfection. But instructors get far more useful information from bounces, skips, and swerves because that sort of adversity shows how trainees are likely to respond to such events in our absence. And no pilot makes perfect landings every time.

It gives me comfort when a tailwheel student adds a blast of engine power to counteract a swerve, or executes a timely go-around. That’s proof they’ve internalized the key survival instinct of tailwheel flying—and they’re ready to go it alone.

Also, I tell them to make three-point landings for the first 100 hours after getting their endorsement. If they want to perfect wheelies after that, come back and we’ll fly some more.

During a recent tailwheel final exam on a particularly blustery day, a trainee’s first two approaches to Clearview ended in go-arounds. After that, he decided to skip the troublesome airport entirely. During the debrief, he was deflated and apologetic and said it was obvious he had failed the test.

I drew the opposite conclusion. The student had made timely and correct go-around decisions, and his choice to forgo landing under those conditions showed sound aeronautical judgment.

That’s what I call success.