{"id":3932,"date":"2016-07-14T16:43:52","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T23:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3932"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","slug":"ringers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/ringers\/","title":{"rendered":"#159 Ringers"},"content":{"rendered":"
Written in September, 2012<\/h5>\n

I didn\u2019t just fall off the turnip truck.\u00a0 I realize I\u2019m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can usually figger out when a ringer has been sent to take my tailwheel course.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure who sends them, but I recognize one when I see him, or in this case, \u201cher\u201d.<\/h3>\n

\u201cDo you have ANY tailwheel time?\u201d I asked before we took our first flight together.\u00a0\"Banning,<\/h3>\n

\u201cNope\u201d, she answered.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve got about two hundred hours and it\u2019s all in a one seventy-two\u201d.<\/h3>\n

So I set about teaching her the wonders of good old, seat o\u2019 the pants, old-fashioned, taildraggy, fundamental flyin\u2019.\u00a0 I started with some air work to tweak up her coordination: Quick Turns, Sky Doodles and Portuguese Rolls. Then I introduced the basic three-point landing.\u00a0 She did fine, never trying to flare too high and only rarely touching the ground before the \u201cpayoff\u201d or stall with the control wheel all the way back.\u00a0 On the way back to our home airport, I had her drop in to one of my favorite little airports, Lake Billy Chinook.\u00a0 She did a nice approach and on short final I pointed out to her that there is a slight rise to the runway.\u00a0 It kinda rises up to meet you.\u00a0 As she got closer, I noticed that the usual flare was not starting.\u00a0 I put my hand on the control wheel in case I needed to help.\u00a0 I was thinking about urging her to start the flare, but I didn\u2019t do or say anything because the sink rate was really slow.\u00a0 I decided to do nothing (I\u2019ve always thought that a good flight instructor does nothing for as long as he possibly can).\u00a0 The runway rose up to meet us and the main wheels kissed the ground like powder on a baby\u2019s ass.\u00a0 And then she betrayed her \u201cringerhood\u201d.\u00a0 She pushed the elevator ever so slightly, planting the mains on the chipsealed runway causing the pitch attitude of the airplane to remain unchanged and the mains to stay planted on the runway.\u00a0 There was no bounce.\u00a0 And then her feet kept that little Cessna running true as you please down that centerline.\u00a0 I waited until she let the tailwheel down and was rolling out to the end.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a ringer, aren\u2019t you,\u201d I quietly accused, my voice dripping with that \u201cyou can\u2019t fool me\u201d tone.<\/h3>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d she puzzled.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve done this before\u201d, I pointed out knowingly.\u00a0 \u201cWhat kind of a landing was that?\u00a0 You only know how to do three point landings, yet you just performed a nearly flawless wheel landing.\u00a0 You really shouldn\u2019t have done that. You just gave yourself away.\u00a0 You\u2019re a ringer.\u00a0 Who sent you?\u201d<\/h3>\n

She laughed, making it even worse.\u00a0 She claimed that it was just a fluke, that it seemed like the thing to do at the time, that she had never flown a tailwheel airplane before.<\/h3>\n

But I know the truth.\u00a0 I know that someone sent her.\u00a0 Maybe it was the FAA.\u00a0 I say bad things about them all the time.\u00a0 Maybe they sent an experienced tailwheeler to me just to see what I\u2019m doing when I teach those tailwheel courses.<\/h3>\n

There is one other possible explanation.\u00a0 It\u2019s possible that the overwhelming majority of people who come to me for a tailwheel endorsement do so because they all have something in common.\u00a0 They all care about improving.\u00a0 They all have incredible motivation and love of the flying arts.\u00a0 They are inquisitive and will never settle for doing something simply because \u201cwe\u2019ve always done it that way\u201d.\u00a0 Those are the kind of people who tend to come to me, making my little niche of tailwheel endorsements a special endeavor that enables me to fly with only those people who have both talent and motivation.<\/h3>\n

Nah, that couldn\u2019t be.\u00a0 She must be a ringer.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Happy Swooping,<\/h3>\n

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

Written in September, 2012 I didn\u2019t just fall off the turnip truck.\u00a0 I realize I\u2019m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can usually figger out when a ringer has been sent to take my tailwheel course.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure who sends them, but I recognize one when I see him, or in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3934,"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":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932"}],"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=3932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}