Coms

Letters

Short takes

This is probably the best column Dave Hirschman has ever written (“Unusual Attitude: Short Takes,” November/December 2020 Flight Training). Every prospective student should read it. Like Hirschman, I have never had the urge to drive a fancy car.

Fernando Aleman
West Newton, Massachusetts

Proud to tell you, I received my 50-year pin, a proud member of your organization.

As a pilot for over 30 years and over 7,000 hours, this is the first letter I have written to any aviation magazine. But Dave Hirschman’s November/December Flight Training magazine column could have been written by me! I have always said aviation is a long series of lies sprinkled with a lot of disappointments. But for those who look up anytime an airplane flies over and put up with the canceled lessons and weathered-out trips, you will be rewarded in ways that you cannot measure. I have owned an airplane for over 25 years (two of them now) and do not regret one single dollar of it. I drive a 1998 BMW with more than 300,000 miles instead of a new Cadillac Escalade, but instead I have some pretty nice airplanes that have taken me to California three times, the Bahamas too many times to count, and every other state in the lower 48.

Thanks for summing up what I have been saying for all these years into one great column.

Frank Watson
Canton, Pennsylvania

Dirty dancing

A caption accompanying Budd Davisson’s “Old is New” (September 2020 Flight Training) referenced “dancing on the rudder pedals” in a tailwheel airplane, a concept the author says “causes me more heartburn than any other trait a student can bring into the cockpit.” Davisson explains:

This technique is a bit controversial, but in my mind, it causes the student more problems in understanding how to control the airplane on the ground than any other single attribute. It is masking what the airplane is actually doing and what he needs to do to control it. Plus, when he moves up into bigger, faster airplanes, it’ll really haunt him. He can get away with it in Cubs and Champs because of the massive dead spot in their tailwheel system. But, not in other, tighter airplanes.

Tailwheel instructors, what’s your take on this technique for ground handling? Email [email protected].

We welcome your comments. Please email [email protected]. Comments will be edited for style and space.

Find more tailwheel content online at aopa.org/ft/tailwheel