{"id":3225,"date":"2015-01-23T19:06:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T03:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3225"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","slug":"122-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/122-2\/","title":{"rendered":"#122 “Why?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, someone will ask me why<\/strong> we do some of the maneuvers we do at Tailwheel Town.\u00a0 They don\u2019t see the purpose of Slaloms, Landings in a Turn and Proximity Flying.\u00a0 I understand this question.\u00a0 It comes from those who are uneducated about the fundamentals of airmanship.\u00a0 Most will eventually learn the answer to their<\/h3>\n
\"DSCN3952\"<\/a>
Flying an irrigation pivot is an excellent introduction to “proximity flying”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

question.\u00a0 Good for them.\u00a0 They might be Whuffos now, but they won\u2019t be much longer.\u00a0 The reason they won\u2019t remain whuffos is simply because they thought to ask why.\u00a0 The folks who worry me most are the ones who are active flyers and who choose to pursue the type of flying they learned at Acme and are convinced that their approach to flying is far safer than our practice of flying closer to the envelope in order to become more proficient.\u00a0 They accept every piece of misinformation their low-time flight instructors tell them. They never practice what we practice and they will never be able to perform the maneuvers our students are capable of before soloing.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they often become the ones who teach others to fly.<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s take our flagship maneuver, the Landing in a Turn.\u00a0 I\u2019ve long maintained that we must always leave ourselves an \u201cout\u201d.\u00a0 That out may be a landing spot that we can only barely glide to in the event of an engine failure.\u00a0 Do you think that you will always have enough altitude \u00a0to<\/h3>\n
\"PA18
Landing in a turn… on snow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0make a power-off rectangular pattern just like they taught you at Acme?\u00a0 Hmmm, maybe the tooth fairy will bring you a new Waco Biplane if she can get it past Santa on the way down your chimney.\u00a0 The Stick and Rudder Master Class graduate will not need enough altitude to fly that lovely pattern. His training in the Landing in a Turn will enable him to safely land in a spot which is at the limit of his aircraft\u2019s glide, even if the landing direction is other than his own current course!<\/h3>\n

Many years ago when I was located near the intracoastal waterway on the East Coast, a lot \"T-craft<\/a>of eyebrows were raised by my practice of flying close to the surface of the water and occasionally hydroplaning on the surface.\u00a0 Whuffos would ask, \u201cwhere\u2019s he gonna go if the engine quits?\u201d\u00a0 Simple:\u00a0 the same place the guy who is much higher will go.\u00a0 We\u2019re both over water.\u00a0 It never occurred to them that \u201cwater skiing\u201d an airplane develops elevator \"140<\/a>skills as no other maneuver can.\u00a0 Similarly, some Acme-trained flying whuffos have questioned the safety of the Irrigation Pivot flight.\u00a0 Being in the pivot is kinda the point.\u00a0 If the engine quits, you land in the track in which you\u2019re presently flying.\u00a0 You won\u2019t have to seek one out!<\/h3>\n
\"DSCN2405\"<\/a>
Hmmm, there’s a likely looking place to put it down…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So many of the maneuvers taught at Tailwheel Town have one simple purpose:\u00a0 To make our applicants more proficient pilots by teaching them maneuvers which place their airplane accurately where they want it while it is both in the air and on the ground.\u00a0 In fact, an early sub title of this course was \u201cprecision airmanship\u201d.\u00a0 Precision is simply not being practiced by the majority of undertrained general aviation pilots.\u00a0 They are barely in control of their aircraft during the landing or takeoff phase.\u00a0 We can prove that such precision is possible and we can, through practice, increase the skill level of the average pilots so that they are no longer barely in control.<\/h3>\n

\u00a0Barry Schiff, an aviation writer for whom I have immense respect, once wrote a very simple statement to me which spoke volumes.\u00a0 We were discussing Dead Stick Landings, a subject about which he had recently written and which every one of my students gets to experience. \u00a0Capt. Schiff said, \u201cIt\u2019s called airmanship\u2026 and they don\u2019t teach it anymore\u201d.\u00a0 Not at Acme, they don\u2019t.<\/h3>\n
\"Dead<\/a>
Performing a dead stick overhead approach. \u00a0 Most pilots never get a chance to do this. It teaches confidence and provides glider experience…. besides, we can’t afford a glider!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How fitting that the son of Wolfgang Langewiesche, William Langewiesche, wrote in his excellent book, \u201cFly by Wire\u201d, the indictment of modern pilots that I wish I had written:\u00a0 \u201c:\u00a0 \u201cMore fundamentally, they spend year after year deep inside the flight envelope, within the narrow range of maneuver that delivers smooth and safe rides to the passengers. They are good at that job\u2026 and often superb.\u00a0 But the consequence of working so far from the extremes is to allow almost all of them to believe that they are full masters of flying, when only a small percentage of them actually are.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

Eventually, places which teach pilots to carefully fly closer to those extremes, places like Tailwheel Town, won\u2019t exist anymore either.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be driven from town by a government agency and its dupes with their pitchforks and torches.<\/h3>\n

Learn it while you can and never stop asking \u201cwhy\u201d.<\/h3>\n

Happy Swooping!<\/h3>\n

Brian<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Eventually, places which teach pilots to carefully fly closer to those extremes… won\u2019t exist anymore either. They\u2019ll be driven from town by a government agency and its dupes with their pitchforks and torches.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,93,165,174,178],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}