brcase
En-Route
love the video, thanks for sharing.
There are at least 5 different kinds of wheels landings. It might be due to the camera views, but it appeared you were doing tail low wheel landings, I could not tell if you were carrying power or not. Power off tail low are one of the harder ones to do as you have the least amount of time to gently set it on the runway, but you do have more room to bring the tail up and stop any minor oscillation of the tail. The more solid you touch down the more aggressively you need to release or even push the stick forward (can depend on trim setting).
If you really are touching down tail low, I would recommend coming in about 5-10mph faster you will find the touch down is easier, with a more tail high touch down. The touch down will likely look like about the same attitude you lift off at for normal (not soft field) take offs. This might look quite nose down in a Decathlon as the cowling is quite low on it to begin with. The faster touch down makes setting it nicely on the runway easier and requires less forward stick if any, but if you do hit hard it will balloon a lot more than the tail low wheel landings and PIOs can be a lot more exciting. A go around with the PIO's is a very good idea. The Decathlon without flap makes tail high wheel landings rather fast touch downs. They are nicer in the Scouts and Citabria's that have flaps.
The main reason for doing wheel landings in most small tail wheel airplanes is just to develop your proficiency in rudder and elevator control during the landings. Very few of them really need or prefer wheel landings. In some gusty wind conditions a wheel landing may be preferred. But mostly I have found them useful for emergency landing and landing with the tow rope while towing gliders. I know of at least two instances where after a power failure the pilot made it to the runway but landed long and felt with a 3 point landing the would ran off the end of the runway so they wheel landed it and carefully applied brakes while still rolling out. I don't recommend braking with tail up for most operations and I don't teach or practice it, however it isn't that hard to do and would certainly recommend if needed for emergency operations. The extreme short field pilots do it all the time. Towing gliders with our Scout we have to clear the end of the runway by 100 feet or risk wrapping the tow rope around one of the runway lights. My procedure is full flap 100 feet over the end of the runway, power off and quickly drop down to the runway and wheel land. Scouts kind of like to wheel land anyway as the gear is so tall it can be difficult to get the tail wheel on the ground especially when flying solo.
Looks like you doing great, impressive direction control for so few hours of tail wheel experience. That tells me you were taught and practice landing on the center line and not settle 10 feet to one side or the other. With only few exceptions I can usually tell if someones instructor was a tail wheel instructor or not even if they have never flown tail wheel. The tail wheel instructors insist (teach) on better directional control than most instructors that don't fly or teach tail wheel.
Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
There are at least 5 different kinds of wheels landings. It might be due to the camera views, but it appeared you were doing tail low wheel landings, I could not tell if you were carrying power or not. Power off tail low are one of the harder ones to do as you have the least amount of time to gently set it on the runway, but you do have more room to bring the tail up and stop any minor oscillation of the tail. The more solid you touch down the more aggressively you need to release or even push the stick forward (can depend on trim setting).
If you really are touching down tail low, I would recommend coming in about 5-10mph faster you will find the touch down is easier, with a more tail high touch down. The touch down will likely look like about the same attitude you lift off at for normal (not soft field) take offs. This might look quite nose down in a Decathlon as the cowling is quite low on it to begin with. The faster touch down makes setting it nicely on the runway easier and requires less forward stick if any, but if you do hit hard it will balloon a lot more than the tail low wheel landings and PIOs can be a lot more exciting. A go around with the PIO's is a very good idea. The Decathlon without flap makes tail high wheel landings rather fast touch downs. They are nicer in the Scouts and Citabria's that have flaps.
The main reason for doing wheel landings in most small tail wheel airplanes is just to develop your proficiency in rudder and elevator control during the landings. Very few of them really need or prefer wheel landings. In some gusty wind conditions a wheel landing may be preferred. But mostly I have found them useful for emergency landing and landing with the tow rope while towing gliders. I know of at least two instances where after a power failure the pilot made it to the runway but landed long and felt with a 3 point landing the would ran off the end of the runway so they wheel landed it and carefully applied brakes while still rolling out. I don't recommend braking with tail up for most operations and I don't teach or practice it, however it isn't that hard to do and would certainly recommend if needed for emergency operations. The extreme short field pilots do it all the time. Towing gliders with our Scout we have to clear the end of the runway by 100 feet or risk wrapping the tow rope around one of the runway lights. My procedure is full flap 100 feet over the end of the runway, power off and quickly drop down to the runway and wheel land. Scouts kind of like to wheel land anyway as the gear is so tall it can be difficult to get the tail wheel on the ground especially when flying solo.
Looks like you doing great, impressive direction control for so few hours of tail wheel experience. That tells me you were taught and practice landing on the center line and not settle 10 feet to one side or the other. With only few exceptions I can usually tell if someones instructor was a tail wheel instructor or not even if they have never flown tail wheel. The tail wheel instructors insist (teach) on better directional control than most instructors that don't fly or teach tail wheel.
Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
