jangell said:
Climb into a J-3 cub. Taxi a mile with a crosswind. If it has the factory brake setup. It WILL overheat. It's that simple.
I didn't say you cherokee is going to overheat. I said it CAN happen with brakes.
It's called brake fade.
My dad cropdusted for many years and logged thousands and thousands of hours doing so. He told me that it would even happen in the stearman on windy days. They also had improved brakes to deal with this.
You will have to drag a brake in a taildragger if there is enough of a crosswind.
This topic isn't going anywhere. Words are being pulled out of my mouth. I'm done.
(Sigh)
Jesse, I have no doubt that you will be a decent stick & rudder in the near future, but it's your absolutist, know-it-all attitude that is rubbing a lot of folks plumb wrong. A couple of weeks into UPT would cure that, then you would be on the road to becoming a really good pilot.
Believe it or not, there
are other pilots out there besides you, your dad, and the handful of instructors you've had. Some of us have as few hours as you and some of us have more hours than your dad, instructors and friends put together times ten. Most of us, however, fall somewhere in the middle of that range and have learned a few things ourselves along the way.
One of the things I've learned is that you can't always apply something to one kind of airplane and make it apply to all airplanes.
Your example about overheating the brakes with a J3? Yes, it can be done--but it also depends upon how strong the crosswind is and from which direction. . . And, there is also a very neat little trick you can do that Cub drivers down here in the SW have known for years to help neutralize crosswinds that you can't do on a C120/140 or on taildraggers like my RV8.
Do you know what it is?
My RV taxis a bit different in a crosswind than does my neighbor's 150 Texas Taildragger, which taxis a bit different from a friend's J3 which taxis different from my friend's (now totalled) Stearman.
W/B, CG, surface, so many variables that determine how different airplanes react--but you seem to insist on making what is correct for ONE aircraft correct for ALL aircraft, and that just ain't the case.
Keep flying and keep learning. It's more than obvious that you love flying (a lot more than you love being stuck in Des Moines over Christmas--and who wouldn't?) and your website reflects that.
In fact, I got a really good chuckle out of your Oshkosh experience, having had more than one of those experiences with whining friends (even a few pilot friends) who want to go home the day after you get there. I've also spent a night or two inside my airplane when the famous Lake Winnebago storms blow in and my tent wasn't up to the task. Now, I check into a hotel, rent a car and act like the old grumpy pilot I am. Same goes for Sun 'N Fun--will never sleep on the ground and fight those damned fire ants ever again. Retirement does have it privileges.
And, just curious, how often do you practice your emergency procedures? My earliest instructors preached "habit patterning" to me, and it's stuck for decades. I look through my log book and if I've gone more than ten or so hours without practicing engine-out and other IFE procedures, then it's up in the Skyhawk and away we go. And at least every 20 hours in the Cardinal, I practice a manual gear landing procedure.
Reason I ask is that in your first hundred to five hundred hours, it's easy to get away from a lot of basic habits and now is the time to make sure your "habit patterning" is getting engraved on the aviation portion of your brain.
Because if you fly long enough, someday you will need to use at least one of those procedures.
Regards,
-JD
