Taildragger recommendations

[Spinka]

When somebody asks me about taildraggers? Cub, Skywagon. The kings of taildragging. If your budget doesn’t fit those? PA-20.

And if PA-20, maybe a PA22/20 with the slightly wider main gear after conversion to taildragger.

 

[Rex Kwan Do]

What's your budget? What's your in plan? Do you want something you can teach in once you are insurable? Do you want something you can still in 12 months? Do you want something you can keep and play around with?

Hi, great questions

I'd like to buy something as budget friendly as possible. 40K seems like a good budget for now.

My plan is to fly single pilot to build tailwheel hours and experience.

I DO NOT want to teach in it.

I don't know that I would own this long term. I could see owning for a year or two and then being able to sell

 

[iamtheari]

My plan is to fly single pilot to build tailwheel hours and experience.

The reason I suggested a Stearman (which is probably not going to fit your budget, sadly) is because, to a greater extent than any other plane within reach of mortals, it has a reputation for making you a better tailwheel pilot. For someone whose goals don't include becoming a great tailwheel instructor, I would have recommended a recent production run Champ. They're comfortable, cheap to keep, and only limited by useful load which isn't a problem flying solo. The problem is that they're too easy to land, so they won't do much to prepare you to save a student's botched landing when you're in the front seat of a J-3 or the back seat of a T-6.

 

[Country Flier]

A Citabria is great for learning and teaching in. Not too difficult but not too easy. Plenty of them available, still being made, and good support.

I got mine in a citabria in about 10 hours...it made the later flights in Taylorcrafts and Cubs ridiculously easy.

 

[Tusayan]

If the intent is to become a good tailwheel pilot at reasonable cost, a Luscombe makes sense. I learned how to fly in one, and particularly if you’ve never flown any other taildragger learning what your feet are for is very doable. An Aeronca or Citabria is surely bigger inside but if you’re flying solo in the Luscombe it might work and you’ll learn a bit more.

As mentioned by others if you’re planning on flying with a passenger in most training taildraggers it’d be beneficial to be thinner.

 

[brcase]

Hi, great questions

I'd like to buy something as budget friendly as possible. 40K seems like a good budget for now.

My plan is to fly single pilot to build tailwheel hours and experience.

I DO NOT want to teach in it.

I don't know that I would own this long term. I could see owning for a year or two and then being able to sell

Based on your size and the above critera I think a stock 7AC Champ is the clear winner for what you want with the Roomy cockpit and low cost.
something like this, but there are several simlar ones on Barnstomers.

1946 AERONCA CHAMP • $29,900 • FOR SALE • C85-12(no starter) TT-1323, TSMOH-55. New Sensenich metal prop, Slick(dual impulse) Mags, air cleaner, spin-on oil filter. TTSN-2978 AF Rebuild and covered(ceconite 102) 1999 Superflite process. Fresh annual 11/2023. Always hangered. Owned 10 yrs. • Contact David Brandon , - located Murray, KY 42071 United States • Telephone: 2702277708 • Posted December 1, 2023 • Show all Ads posted by this Advertiser • Recommend This Ad to a Friend • Email Advertiser • Save to Watchlist • Report This Ad • View Larger Images

Citabria's even an 7ECA would be good, have the same cockpit, cost more but gets you an Electrical System and Better heater, and a bit higher maintenance costs.
EDIT: oh, and the Citabra will have brakes, probably toe brakes that work, as opposed to heel brakes on the Champ, which isn't a problem, they barely work anyway, and you shouldn't be using them for much of anything other than the Runup.
People like the Metal Spars, but with a good inspection wood Spars will likely last a very very long time, just make sure your A&P is comfortable inspecting them.


Brian
CFIIG/ASEL

 

[RyanShort1]

If the intent is to become a good tailwheel pilot at reasonable cost, a Luscombe makes sense. I learned how to fly in one, and particularly if you’ve never flown any other taildragger learning what your feet are for is very doable. An Aeronca or Citabria is surely bigger inside but if you’re flying solo in the Luscombe it might work and you’ll learn a bit more.

As mentioned by others if you’re planning on flying with a passenger in most training taildraggers it’d be beneficial to be thinner.

As a Luscombe owner, I think he'd be very challenged to get checked out first... so I'd advise against that.

For real world numbers, with a decent fuel load, my max useful load is about 350-60, so he'd need a 100 lb instructor for the checkout, and I can tell you that it's pretty snug for me to fly with a 200 lb'er.

 

[Tusayan]

Useful load for two person Luscombe checkout is a good point that I hadn’t considered. Mine had 445 lb useful load, subtracting 14 gallons for fuel would leave you 361 lbs for crew.

This issue would also apply to any plane with a similar useful load. It seems to me that with a 250 lb pilot, you’d need perhaps 540 lb useful load to account for another pilot plus fuel for short training flights. Certainly over 500 lbs.

 

[Greg Bockelman]

No one said you have to fill the tanks. Especially on a local checkout flight.

 

[RyanShort1]

No one said you have to fill the tanks. Especially on a local checkout flight.

The tanks aren’t huge to begin with, and many aircraft are heavier than the numbers I posted. My aircraft is a very light example with minimal instruments and interior. I asked for weight and balance on all the planes I looked at and it wouldn’t be uncommon to see planes 10-40 lbs heavier.

A 65hp Luscombe burns about 4 gph - but an 85hp “upgrade” closer to 6. if you want to fly for an hour in the 65hp plane you legally need to carry 6 gals min of the 14 total, in the 85hp planes, you really need to have 9 gals for takeoff, which is only 30 lbs of extra cabin load. So, you can legally take off with 30-48 lbs less of fuel than max… but that definitely isn’t that big of a difference and it’s definitely an operational hindrance and you are essentially always operating at max gross which is harder on the aircraft if you are grinding out a bunch of noobie landings.

 

[strangebird]

Look for a Piper PA 12 Supercruiser with 150 HP engine, big back seat, easy to land

A C 170 is a great airplane, kind of narrow upfront, have you seen the prices lately on Citabrias, 170s, 180s etc?

 

[brcase]

Useful load for two person Luscombe checkout is a good point that I hadn’t considered. Mine had 445 lb useful load, subtracting 14 gallons for fuel would leave you 361 lbs for crew.

This issue would also apply to any plane with a similar useful load. It seems to me that with a 250 lb pilot, you’d need perhaps 540 lb useful load to account for another pilot plus fuel for short training flights. Certainly over 500 lbs.

Any more if you see a Champ, Cub, Citabria, Luscombe or similar taxing out with two people in it, there is probably a better than 50% chance that the plane is over gross weight.
With usually no more than a 13gal tank (standard tanks, Citabria is a bit better with larger tanks) and any aux tanks dry, even going 1/2 tank only gives you about 40lbs more useful load and they are taking off with only 6.5 gallons of gas, which usually means on the ground the tank fuel gauge is reading 1/4 to 1/3 full.

Brian

 

[Ed Haywood]

Any more if you see a Champ, Cub, Citabria, Luscombe or similar taxing out with two people in it, there is probably a better than 50% chance that the plane is over gross weight.
With usually no more than a 13gal tank (standard tanks, Citabria is a bit better with larger tanks) and any aux tanks dry, even going 1/2 tank only gives you about 40lbs more useful load and they are taking off with only 6.5 gallons of gas, which usually means on the ground the tank fuel gauge is reading 1/4 to 1/3 full.

Brian

This is true. In some variants, max gross is limited by gear flex, not by flight performance. Most notable example is the Super Decathlon. An older 8KCAB loaded 200# over gross will take off in 800 feet, climb at 800fpm, and has no appreciable difference in stall/spin characteristics. But because it has the same gear legs as the Citabria, a poorly executed wheel landing at/over max gross stands a fair chance of causing a prop strike. That is why adding the new (2005) gear legs to a metal spar aircraft allows an MGW increase of 150 pounds in normal category.

 

[Ed Haywood]

Worth discussing how many TW hours is enough to instruct.

My first TW instructor had 10 hours himself. Seriously. We ground looped a Champ on my second flight. No damage thankfully, and was a lesson I never forgot. Rolling forward one moment, backwards the next, in the blink of an eye.

IMO for the first 50-100 hours you are sometimes behind the aircraft. After that, it should be mostly instinctive. By the time you hit 500 hours you will feel like you are wearing the plane.

The question is whether you have sufficient experience to handle challenging conditions and to recover from student-induced errors. Landings at max crosswind component in a taildragger can be quite the dance, but once you have experienced that a few times it comes easy. A couple hours with a VERY experienced TW CFI can show you the tricks of getting yaw oscillation under control when someone ham hands (or foots) it towards a ground loop.

A related but not TW-specific challenge would be instructing in a tandem seating aircraft where you cannot see the airspeed indicator. Better have a good sense for how the aircraft feels in slow flight.

 

[brcase]

This is true. In some variants, max gross is limited by gear flex, not by flight performance. Most notable example is the Super Decathlon. An older 8KCAB loaded 200# over gross will take off in 800 feet, climb at 800fpm, and has no appreciable difference in stall/spin characteristics. But because it has the same gear legs as the Citabria, a poorly executed wheel landing at/over max gross stands a fair chance of causing a prop strike. That is why adding the new (2005) gear legs to a metal spar aircraft allows an MGW increase of 150 pounds in normal category.

As I recall this appears to be the case between the Citabria and Scout also, in addition to being acrobatic rated. 5 G's for the Citabria
If you recalculate the Gross Weight of a Citabria at 3.8 G's it comes out almost exactly the same as a Scout.
But as you point out that says nothing about what the landing gear is rated for, or the performance requirements.


Citabria 7GCBC
5 G's
1650 lbs (wood spar)
Recalculate load to 3.8G
5*1650=8225lbs
8225/3.8= 2171lbs (Wing Gross Weight)


Scout 8GCBC
3.8 G's
2150 lbs




Brian

 

[Dana]

I don't know about the rest of the landing gear, but I do know the Scout uses a heavier tailwheel spring than the Citabria, which uses a heavier spring than the Champ. (I know this from researching a replacement spring for my Hatz, for which the originally specified Champ spring was too light but the Citabria spring is just right.)

 

[Ed Haywood]

I don't know about the rest of the landing gear, but I do know the Scout uses a heavier tailwheel spring than the Citabria, which uses a heavier spring than the Champ. (I know this from researching a replacement spring for my Hatz, for which the originally specified Champ spring was too light but the Citabria spring is just right.)

The price is so cheap relative to most airplane parts, I figured the Decathlon springs were repurposed automotive leaf springs or something. Maybe they are just easy to make?


Now main gear are almost made of unobtainium. Factory redesigned from spring steel to Grove-drilled aluminum about 17 years ago, but COVID supply chain issues cut off the supply. New set is $7K. Refurbed steel is $2K if you can find 'em.