Good instinct
“You have good instincts,” my instructor assured me in the debrief of this tailwheel transition lesson. I laughed, because it certainly didn’t feel like it. He explained I was making the right corrections, but too late and tentatively. Tailwheel flying demands quick, decisive rudder inputs, and I was overthinking it. “Trust your instincts.”
Instinct is a bit of a misnomer for the automatic reactions we develop in response to the dynamic flying environment. The gut is trained. While some motor skills build on the foundation we develop in childhood, learning to fly conditions us to respond in ways that are often counterintuitive. As Wolfgang Langewiesche points out in Stick and Rudder, it is safe to be high, dangerous to be low; safe to go fast, dangerous to go slow; and the only way to climb when mushing toward the ground is to point the nose down. But, as with any skill, we hone our flying by practice: over- or under-correcting, observing how we miss the mark, and trying again, a little closer, until something clicks. We start to trust our instincts.
When I started training for my tailwheel endorsement, I was transported back to the early days of primary flight training, wobbling through landings like a kid on a bike without training wheels. This time, however, only the landings were new: I wasn’t fumbling over radio calls, sweating stalls in the practice area, or drilling airspace in ground school. I got to file all those skills away as instinct and apply them to a new, but not altogether foreign challenge.We hone our flying by practice until something clicks. We start to trust our instincts.
I practiced curving approaches to private grass strips. I held the wheels off the pavement tracking the centerline of the longest runway in the region. When the ceiling was too low for pattern work, we kept the lone tower controller company as I fast-taxied the length of Runway 5 at my home field. Every time I pressed on the left rudder pedal and the nose pointed left, the connection strengthened in my mind and the response became more automatic. Soon, my feet knew what they were doing. I was in control.
The first few landings that went as I intended, I was suspicious. Surely this obedient airplane wasn’t the same beast that had jostled me not long ago. Then we flew again in different wind conditions, and again, and the airplane continued to behave. Our last dual flight, I fought through shifting wind on final approach, a couple bounces, and a go-around. As I taxied back to the hangar, my instructor asked me how it had gone. I’d had better flights, I grumbled, docking myself style points as I compared that day’s landings with those smooth touchdowns on the previous flight with a steady wind down the runway.
I’d missed the point. Conditions had changed, but I’d landed safely, under control, and made my own corrections with no instructor intervention. My instructor signed me off to solo on the next flight, and I capped my tailwheel endorsement with five laps around the pattern alone.
There aren’t many moments in a flying life as triumphant as a first solo. Students have plenty yet to learn, but key motor skills have been ingrained, and the milestone helps propel students on to further challenges. First solo in a taildragger captures some of that magic: the flutter of anticipation, the empowerment and pride. Taxiing back to the hangar, I felt like a kid who’d just gotten the hang of riding a bike—still tentative at times, but ready to conquer the neighborhood.
Editorial Director Sarah Deener earned her tailwheel endorsement in September 2025.
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