low budget flying.

[charleskieffner]

yesterday some nice crabbing action on final approach. winds s/sw to the north 25-35 knots. lightning and rain. heres a pic of final final final approach. very good pilot for conditions. not exactly a tail dragger kind of day.

[Dantilla]

Sometime I'm going to get a taildragger checkout.

The Bonanza lands so nicely it makes me look good.

[charleskieffner]

another pic jets landing at our field IS A BIG DEAL due to length of strip and occassional deer/javelina/bobcats/dogs/coyotes etc. come january when phx. open on and scottsdale airport fills up hangers and ty-down spaces, we become overload parking. have had a couple jet jockys run into dirt run-off and ingest granite into turbines...................a very expensive landing!

NOTE WINDSOCK!

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Nice!

In my early cargo pilot days I flew a PA32R Lance (kind of like a Cherokee-6 on steroids). One of the runs was from Burbank up the Owens Valley (back side of the Sierra Nevada range) and up to Mammoth Lakes. I can't count the number of days I had to take off out of there in the late afternoon when it was blazing hot (density altitudes >11,000' weren't uncommon) with ripping 20 or 30-knot DIRECT crosswinds. That'll put hair on your chest for sure.

Then try doing it at night.

Does wonders for one's confidence and faith in abilities though. I was a lot more appreciative of the larger (and turbocharged) Navajos, Chieftains and the Beech 99 when I got upgraded to those eventually. I do miss the days in the Lance though - it was some crazy fun flying.

[304065]

Chuck, the great thing about most taildraggers is that they ALSO suffer from significant adverse yaw, which is, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, a condition caused by the downward-deflecting aileron on the outside wing having more drag than the upward-deflecting aileron on the inside wing, which yaws the nose opposite the direction you are commanding with the roll.

Anyway, the point of the aerodynamics lecture is that most taildraggers have "one-and-a-half rudders" or a rudder of sufficient size and power to overcome adverse yaw, and also to be able to control the airplane on the takeoff roll, when the airspeed is low and the left-turning tendency is high and varying as the tail comes up (p-factor and gyroscopic precession) the power comes up (torque) and the airspeed comes up (spiraling slipstream). This will require a varying rudder input all the way to cruise.

That all means that many taildraggers can handle crosswinds pretty damn well, but it also means that the PILOT has to have pretty good technique.

What's sexy about coming over the fence at 100 KIAS with a 20 knot crosswind? Most jets have a small rudder so they autocoordinate in flight, though, so I can understand why they would crab with the ailerons before transitioning to a forward slip.

[charleskieffner]

2 points here. last flight i went on in dehavilland beaver and a group of other tail draggers. our mission was the "$100 dollar omelette" at payson airport. while enroute pilot amigo radioed payson for conditions. 25-35 knot winds. we scrubbed payson and headed for sedona(damn, what an ugly place-LOL). reason he stated that some in flight group didnt like such high winds for landings.

yesterdays citation on final had his A$$ end out so far from straight line approach it was a sight! at last second put it straight and touched down. he was good. watch boatloads of landings and takeoffs daily. you get good at noting technique. im not a pilot, my dad was. i am lucky enough to walk away from dornier do-27 plane crash. only reason i would get lic. is to scout elk/caribou or run away to south pacific and work with seaplane biz. i RUN from experimentals..............learned my lesson.