For those of you who don't follow his YouTube channel, it appears he has good backcountry pilot skills. How would the outcome have been any different if he were flying a comparable tailwheel airplane with big Alaska bushwheels?
https://youtu.be/77LJUq-BlXE
Terry
It's pretty hard to argue that if MotoAve had been flying a C180 with 35" Bushwheels (instead of the C-182 with an 8:50 tire on the nose), he probably would have suffered minimal damage landing on what turned out to be much softer-than-expected sand. But would he have been OK if he "only" had 31-inch Bushwheels? Odds are that he would still have been OK. Well then, what if they were even smaller 26" Goodyears? Or if he had the same size tire (21-inch 8:50x6) tires on his C180 mainwheels as the one he had on the C182 nose gear? Would the load being spread across two of the 21s kept it from sinking in and probably flipping over? Impossible to know for sure. In this case, tire sizes (and placement - nosewheel vs tailwheel) are trade offs – a form of risk mitigation.
The video clearly demonstrates that there are, indeed, some places where you should not land with a nosewheel, and that in the momenbt,
we don't always get to choose where we land... Though to be fair, one could argue that by flying low along the beach, he was "choosing" to limit his emergency landing options such that he might no choices at all... The CFI's I've flown with (and my Army flight training) taught that an engine failure is a foreseeable event, and that you should give yourself an "out" if it were to occur. I was cringing during the earlier parts of the video, with the foreknowledge that he was definitely going to have an engine failure (it was in the video title), and thinking "Where would I land if the engine quit now?" with ditching the plane in the water as the only viable option at many points in that flight, due to the low altitudes and lack of "beach" along parts of that route. Would I, personally, have made that flight low along the coastline? Probably not. Would I have done so knowing that oil analysis was telling me something might be wrong with the engine? I would hope the answer would be "Definitely not..."
But I also have to acknowledge that every time I gett in the airplane and take off, I accept what I consider to be a very low risk of an engine failure over the densely populated area just off the end of my local airport's runway. If I want to fly the plane, there is no real way to totally eliminate that risk - the airport is now mostly surrounded by housing developments, with only a few open fields remaining. I can mitigate the risk by properly maintaining my engine, by performing a good pre-flight every time – including sumping the tanks, and by planning ahead for the possibility of the engine quitting and knowing where I would go at every point in the takeoff and climb portion... But I can not completely eliminate all risks in flying, any more than I can eliminate all risks in any aspect of life.
We ALL take risks when we fly. Some risks we
avoid by not doing something that might increase risk. Others we
mitigate as best we can. Some folks (like me) won't knowingly fly into "rough, unprepared" fields. Others install larger tires "just in case" they wind up in a rougher-than-expected landing zone. And some will not fly without 35s on their plane, even if they land 99% of the time on paved, 5000-foot runways, just because they might someday need to land off-airport.
But there are also some risks that can be mitigated by tricycle gear. One of those is better ground handing in strong crosswinds -– especially as you approach the limit of what the airplane can handle. I'm not a super-pilot – just an average Joe... But I managed to get my tricycle gear RANS S-6 (which stalls at something below 30 mph, and which has a published "demonstrated crosswind" capability of 25 mph) on the ground and to the tiedown area in winds that were 35G45, and that were 20* off the runway heading. This took place at the end of a 2.5 hour cross-country leg. I was bringing the plane home from Utah where I purchased it. The winds that came up in the Albuquerque area were
significantly higher than what was forecast even an hour earlier. There were several airports within my fuel range, all of which were experiencing similar (or even higher) winds. I chose the one whose runway was most closely aligned with the wind direction ("only" 20* of crosswind). There was no "good" option, only the "least bad" option in this circumstance...
I seriously doubt that I could have landed there had I been flying the S-6 tailwheel model - otherwise identical to mine. As it was, I found myself flying backward on short final at a very low power setting... I had to add power and literally hover the plane onto the runway at about 1/2 throttle. I then had to add power to be able to taxi into that wind. Only the fact that the nosewheel could be held onto the ground with down-elevator allowed me to have enough traction to turn the plane enough (maybe 30*) to cut the corner of the taxiway intersection, and "skitter" the plane across the ramp to a tie-down that was somewhat shielded from the worst of the wind by a hangar. (Unfortunately, that also made the wind quite "swirly" and unpredictable.)
I was very fortunate that a local guy saw my predicament, and came over to help tie the plane down while I held the brakes and kept the engine running to keep from being blown backwards. When I finally got out of the plane, I literally kissed the ground (and the airplane) in relief. Not something I hope to ever experience again! I kept thinking: if I had I purchased an S-6 with a tailwheel (which is what I had originally wanted before changing my mind), the outcome would have been very much in question... A better pilot might have managed to keep it pinned to the ground, and even perhaps done a tail-high taxi (like you see in the YouTube videos) to the taxiway turnoff. But I cannot envision any way that even a truly superior pilot could have made the turn and taxied to the parking area, much less how he could have gotten out of the plane to tie it down... Letting the tail down to the ground would have launched the plane into the air immediately (winds were well above the stall speed of 28-30 mph). Even behind the hangar, the lighter weight after exiting the plane would have likely sent it airborne again... Bigger tires on the taildragger would have only increased the angle of attack on the ground, potentially making a bad situation even worse...
