{"id":3279,"date":"2015-03-14T07:08:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T14:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","slug":"125-whoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/125-whoa\/","title":{"rendered":"#125 “Whoa!!!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI never use my brakes\u201d.\u00a0 I have heard that boast from so many pilots over the years.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but wonder why this is such a point of pride.\u00a0 In \u201cBrian\u2019s Flying Book\u201d, I pointed out that one of the skills a race car driver develops is the use of brakes.\u00a0–A professional race car driver would never drive a race course without aggressively using his brakes.<\/h3>\n

But for some reason, many pilots have been taught by generations of instructors that to use one\u2019s brakes is the result of bad planning.\u00a0 Wrong!\u00a0 Virtually any airplane can be turned sharper with the use of its brakes than without.\u00a0 Our chosen type of airplane, the tailwheel airplane, is a great example.\u00a0 When we apply that inside brake and pop loose the steerable tailwheel, we are able to pirouette the plane around one main wheel.\u00a0 One of my favorite students (you know who you are) refers to it as \u201ctwirling\u201d and gets a kick out of practicing it.<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m going to go out on a limb here and state that I don\u2019t think most tailwheel pilots are very good at using their brakes aggressively to stop a landing airplane.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they are afraid of putting the airplane on its back.<\/h3>\n
\"This<\/a>
This is the result that so many tailwheel pilots are deathly afraid of… The embarassing and expensive nose over, often due to over-braking and “lazy elevator”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This may be the Achilles heel of tailwheel airplanes, but it\u2019s also their advantage.\u00a0 A tricycle gear plane is prevented from nosing over because of that appendage that was placed on the nose in order to make the airplane easier to handle and thus more saleable.\u00a0 The pilot of a tailwheel airplane can use his elevator to put virtually all the weight of the aircraft on its mains and make his brakes extremely effective while the trike\u2019s pilot goes skidding past him.<\/h3>\n

It takes practice to be able to accurately control the pitch of a landing and decelerating airplane WITHOUT screwing up and putting it on its back.\u00a0 Brake, elevator, power and the nature of the landing surface all combine to control the pitch of that airplane.\u00a0 An inexperienced pilot or one operating in the heat of competition can very easily lose control of pitch and end up coming to a stop while hanging upside down in his seatbelt.<\/h3>\n

Most pilots have seen the videos from the Bush Pilot\u2019s competition in Valdez Alaska.\u00a0 It seems that almost every year, one of the competitors ends up red-faced, both from the added blood pressure to the head as a result of being upside down and the embarrassment of ending up like that in front of an audience.<\/h3>\n

From the standpoint of a teacher, it\u2019s one of the hardest things to teach.\u00a0 Of all the controls in a normal airplane used for training, the brakes are the only control the flight instructor can\u2019t override.\u00a0 If a student and instructor are practicing short field work and the student stomps too hard on the brake, the instructor can\u2019t release that brake pressure. He can operate throttle and elevator, but that may not be enough.\u00a0 So it\u2019s understandable that the teaching of brake usage has to be approached carefully and with a lot of ground instruction and trust!\u00a0 Personally, I feel that if I continue to teach braking to everyone, eventually somebody\u2019s gonna put my plane on its back.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking that in the future I will only teach braking to the most talented students.<\/h3>\n

There are many airshow pilots who routinely use a combination of brakes, power and elevator to either stop or slow an airplane sufficiently to \u201ctake a bow\u201d in front of an airshow crowd.\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet there are a lot of otherwise very proficient pilots in that business who won\u2019t do it or can\u2019t do it.\u00a0 Perhaps the best example I saw while in that business was the late, great, Jimmy Franklin.\u00a0 Jimmy would \u201ctake a bow\u201d in front of the crowd line with his smoke system billowing a giant cloud behind him and his pitch perfectly controlled.\u00a0 Art Scholl used to \u201ctwirl\u201d his Chipmunk in a huge cloud of smoke.\u00a0 He rarely demonstrated the ability to get it up on its mains, but he did create a big enough cloud of smoke so that his dog, Aileron, could be snuck into him to later fool the audience into thinking she\u2019d done the whole aerobatic routine!<\/h3>\n

Why were Jimmy Franklin and a handful of other airshow pilots \u00a0capable of taking that bow with their tails in the air while others couldn\u2019t?\u00a0 Leaving out raw talent (which Jimmy had in spades), it was practice.\u00a0 If we never practice a maneuver, we\u2019ll never get good at it.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I urge every pilot to practice aggressive braking in order to perfect short field landings and precise ground positioning.\u00a0 And this is where the flying Whuffos will register their disagreement.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll be replacing discs and linings a lot more often\u2026I NEVER USE MY BRAKES\u201d, they\u2019ll repeat.<\/h3>\n

Fine.\u00a0 If you\u2019d like to be like all the other flying Whuffos, never use your brakes.\u00a0 They will last a lot longer.\u00a0 You\u2019ll save a few bucks.\u00a0 And you will remain a Whuffo.<\/h3>\n

Happy Swooping,<\/h3>\n

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

” If you\u2019d like to be like all the other flying Whuffos, never use your brakes. They will last a lot longer. You\u2019ll save a few bucks. And you will remain a Whuffo.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3284,"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":[35,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279"}],"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=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}