Tailwheel/nosewheel Question

[Nev]

It does take a few hours to get your hand back in on light aircraft, it’s a very different operation in pretty much all respects, particularly coming from the strict SOP’s and regulatory framework you’d be used too. In many ways it’s a much simpler operation once you’re up and running, but they can still bite you pretty quick. I usually seek out a keen instructor - this has just been for nose wheel aircraft that I used to fly a lot and I always learn something from the instructors while they keep me safe.




I’ve kept my BFR current over the years to keep my NZ license alive, but it’s really not enough for me to be proficient at this stage. I’m planning to buy a share in a tail dragger syndicate and become a student again. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of very experienced tailwheel pilots who I can get to instruct me and I’m really looking forward to that experience.

[Nev]

Actually re-reading your question, I’ve mis-read it sorry. I think you were asking for an aircraft type recommendation which I don’t have, but very interested in what others recommend too.

[rodsmith]

I am in the market also. I have over 500 hours hours in a Maule but that was over 20 years ago, I really feel the need to put 100 hours in a tail dragger before doing the first flights in the Bearhawk. From my recent searches it appears the best bang for the buck is a Pacer. At 6400' field elevation I feel I need 150hp in whatever I buy which ups the cost some. My preference would be a Citabria, there are some good looking deals on lower HP PA12s.

[zkelley2]

I have a coworker that runs a o290 pacer out of SLC. It works. Learn to read thermals, ridge lift, etc.

[marcusofcotton]

I bought an avid Mark IV for this purpose. ELSA registered so that I can do the inspections after having taken the required course. Slows down the building process though, but I like it so much I might keep it afterwards.

[Rollie]

A couple things to consider, one is that those airplanes that you listed that seem overpriced are expensive for a reason - they are popular which makes reselling them easier. Another is that if you want to fly it a hundred hours or so and sell it without losing much you need to resist the urge to improve / modify the airplane, you want to get one that is ready to fly the way it is and not spend money making it nicer as you are not likely to recoup all of what you put into it. For example, if you install new avionics the plane gains the value of that avionics but not the cost of the installation.

Your profile doesn't name which model you are building. If you are building one of the tandem models a Champ would be a good choice, they are relatively cheap and set up pretty similar to the LSA. Citabria would be good too. I think that flying those would translate better to the BH than a Cub would. My opinion. Pacers are cheap and being short coupled, they make you a better tail wheel pilot in the end but they also can take awhile to sell. It took me 1.5 years to sell mine and it was a nice one and I was selling it cheap.

Selling airplanes can take awhile, sometimes years, so my biggest advice is to get a plane you like because you might end up owning it for longer than you plan to.

[Bdflies]

This is the closest thread I could resurrect to ask this question.

It is coming time to figure out how to fly with the 3rd wheel on the other end of the airplane. Looking at what it costs to rent a plane, it looks like it might make sense to buy a cheap taildragger and fly 50-200 hours, rather than renting.

You can learn in lots of different airplanes. I am really not interested in "the" airplane for tailwheel practice. I guess my biggest priority is being able to sell it easily when I am done, for hopefully not much less than what I paid.

Early Cessna's, Pipers's? I heard Luscombes are fun to fly, and they have a stick. Being able to sell it down the road in a timely matter is more important to me than finding the perfect airplane to train in.

Super Cub's are way overpriced. Cessna 170's are getting up there in price.

Any thoughts? I have slightly above zero experience with light planes, and it was almost all 40 years ago. I have never come close to owning a plane until I bought my kit from Mark.

While it makes sense to do what you suggest, there are other factors. If you plan to insure your new tailwheel trainer, you'll find that the insurance company might be more difficult to satisfy than the FAA. You'll need an endorsement to fly it, but the insurance may require 10hrs (or more) dual. An experienced Citabria would be a good trainer (fairly short-coupled, sprighty handling, but not inclined to bite you too hard and really fun to fly!). Experienced Citabria's, like all 'Experienced' planes, tend to be needy. Or, you could find a really nice, well cared for, hangar queen. Might not need the TLC, but the price is higher and you may not come out of it well. If you could find a tailwheel partnership, that would be a great situation.. especially if your partner was a CFI who could do your sign-off.
I think you're on the right track. Couple of hundred hrs piloting a tailwheel will do you good. Be forewarned, however, no Citabria is going to prepare you for the first time you push the throttle fully on your 540 powered Bearhawk!

Bill

[way_up_north]

I know this may sound sacrilegious on this site but has anyone built a 4 place with a nosewheel? Before you tar and feather me I tried the search function and didn’t see anything. And I know the benefits of tailwheel in off airport and backcountry flying are great. I’m just a little late to the party in my md 50’s and prefer to land with nosewheel. I hear I could learn tailwheel landings but I feel I would just be more comfortable landing and typically won’t be landing on rough territory. So just wanted to know if it’s possible or been done already. I really like everything about the BH but this one thing seems to give me pause. Thanks

I`ve thought about the same thing, you would have to move the main wheels back and install brackets for the nose wheel to attach to

I`m not familiar with the engineering involved for such a mod, but I thought the Bearhawk would look just as handsome with a nose wheel.

I found this Tri pacer photo that I think is a close match to what a Bearhawk would look like with a nose wheel.

piper-tri-pacer-airplane-hanger-antique-aircraft-rests-its-airport-142550346.jpg

[JimParker256]

I was faced with exactly the same situation as you: building a Bearhawk (Patrol, in my case) with zero tailwheel time. I looked into the cost to rent a tailwheel airplane near me to earn the endorsement, and found that the only local school offering that training rented their Decathlons for $240 / hour, including $75 per hour for the CFI. They estimated 5-6 hours for the endorsement, or about $1,200 to 1500. (By the way, their insurance did not allow for solo flights – you had to pay the CFI rate and take the CFI with you each and every time... Unacceptable.)

Since I decided I should have something with a tailwheel to fly (and stay current while building), I decided to purchase a tailwheel plane. After looking around at pretty much everything with a tailwheel that was available and under $50K or so, I settled on a Citabria 7ECA with an O-200 engine. I'm a bigger guy, and that particular Citabria model has the most useful load of any of them, since it's got the lightest engine, and all the older Citabrias share the same max gross weight. It impacts performance, but I could live with that, especially considering that the Patrol would eventually solve that problem – in spades! I spent maybe 3 months looking, and missed out on a couple of good ones because they sold very quickly – and I was initially slow to commit!

I got in the habit of checking Barnstormers, T-A-P, and the other online marketplaces first thing in the morning, and then again several times a day, hoping to find a new listing before someone else beat me to it. It finally paid off when I found a '65 7ECA with the O-200 that claimed to be in good mechanical shape, but with "ugly" fabric. Oh, it looked pretty good in the pictures, which were taken from 100 ft away, but the guy candidly admitted that it was a bit "rough... The seller and I reached a verbal agreement for me to purchase the plane, assuming it was "as described" and passed a pre-buy inspection. All this occurred less than an hour after he first posted the listing. I went to see it that day (<100 miles from home), and the rest of it seemed to be in good shape, so I gave him a deposit and we scheduled a pre-buy inspection with a neutral A&P/IA. He found a couple of niggling details, and one soft cylinder. The seller wanted to re-work the cylinder, but agreed to replace it if I would pay for half. We rolled that into the purchase agreement and closed the deal.

Insurance wanted me to get 10 hrs in type with a CFI before soloing. No problem, because instead of paying $240 per hour to rent the Deke, I was flying my own plane (<5 gph) and paying my CFI buddy ten dollars per hour more than he was asking (ridiculously low "friend" rate). Even so, ten hours of dual in my plane was way less $$ than the "quickie" checkout in the flight school's Deke.

While I owned the plane, I took good care of it. Every issue that came up was immediately fixed (except, of course, for the fabric replacement). And still, my grand total dollars spent maintaining that plane (including three annuals) was significantly less than I spent on the cheapest annual inspection I had on my previous airplane (a high-performance single engine retractable).

Finally, just short of 4 years after I purchased the Citabria, I sold it. And again it sold within an hour or so of posting the listing on Barnstormers. I sold it for exactly what I paid for it.

If I were doing it all again, I would do exactly the same thing, except I probably would have jumped on one of the earlier deals that I missed out on due to "failure to commit"... Without the pressing need to re-cover the plane (which would have cost almost as much as the plane cost me in the first place), I would probably still own it. The guy who bought it plans to recover it himself (under the supervision of his A&P/IA) and log that time towards his A&P license. I wasn't quite that ambitious...

[svyolo]

My experience buying and selling boats tells me buying the cheapest one is not the "bargain". Translating that to airplanes, you can buy a Pacer for 18k, spend 40k on a recover, 20k on an engine rebuild, and in the end you end up with a really nice Pacer that might be worth 30k. I would rather find the 30k Pacer with newer fabric and a low time engine.

[geraldmorrissey]

If I was going to buy a plane to learn conventional gear I would go with a Luscombe. Fast, comfortable, if your not too tall, easy to maintain and there are lots of them around. Join the various type groups to learn as much as you can. I owned a 65HP rag wing 8A, no electric for years and loved it. Paid $3,000, sold it for $3,000. Flew it all over with a compass and a sectional, pre GPS and never spent a penny on hull insurance or hanger fee's. Airframe parts can be an issue. Another option it the Cessna 120/140. Another fine plane readily available, won't break the bank. I do think a nosewheel should become a part of the Bearhawk lineup. Up here in Seattle there are many working 182/206/207's with monster nose wheels. Gone most of the year they return for maintainence covered in mud and rock chips.
Gerry
Patrol #30

[way_up_north]

I`m not a pilot yet.... just love to build...so maybe I don't have a clue....


Just a thought...I think the possibility of a nose wheel Bearhawk should always be on the drawing board and plans for it... ready to go.....There is a possibility the whole fleet might go nose wheel overnight....

they are working like mad to develop new batteries...technology moves forward and things change...

whats holding back electric planes is not the motors but the battery capacity

if a battery was developed tomorrow that had 5X or 10X current batteries...there would be a rush overnight to change out the ice engines and drop in electric motors in almost all small aircraft...with that props would probably go very light.

Carb Icing gone....overhaul costs cut by 90%.....possibilities we've not even considered...like reverse thrust on landing (free and light weight just part of the engine) and prop reverse so you could drop almost straight down into a landing site..(thinking of how we have Stol competitions)...you might have zero landing distances..

In the event solar panels keep up the improvements in batteries...jumping from 17% efficient to %60....or better..
camping in the woods and recharging your tanks(battery) with solar cells on the wing....possibly planes parked outside never needing to be refueled ever again....

regardless....even if solar didn't improve.... plugging in for the recharge would be very economical.....flying might get really... really cheap....

it goes on and on

maybe some batteries can be placed forward under the cowl...hopefully enough to not change anything...but if not...

you would have to solve the problem of having 100 pounds or more gone from under the cowl and a very tail heavy plane....an easy solution I can think of would be to remove the tail wheel and install a nose wheel to remove the weight off the tail and help solve for the lighter nose...with alterations to the main gear...ect..

[zkelley2]

The solar array you would need to charge a set of batteries with 1/3rd the energy as 50 gals of gasoline would be massive. Or I guess it could be small, but it'd take 2 years to charge.
The time it would take to charge a battery pack with an energy equivalency of 50 gals of gasoline(given 20% ICE and 90% electric efficiency) on a 240v 50A charger from the wall would be around 30 hours to charge. 205 hours on a standard US socket.
Physics is going to keep solar charging of vehicles being realistic for a very long time. Honestly you need 3 phase power at wherever you park your plane and even with a "supercharger" delivering 120kW at peak you're still well over a 3 hour charge time.

A lot of people don't realize Tesla's are running around with the equivalent of about 3 gallons of gasoline in them.
The amount of battery storage you'd need to equal a 50 gallon bearhawk is about 370kWh. The best lithium batteries are ~250Wh/kg. That's 3250lb worth of batteries. At 10x better energy density we're starting to get into the ballpark, but you still have the charging taking hours or days problem.

Reverse is already a thing on piston airplanes. It has been since the 30s with radials, but MT makes a reversing prop for any lycoming or continental and Airmaster makes them for Rotax.

[Nev]

I agree, electric aircraft are making progress at a much faster rate than aviation did in its early years. It’s a very exciting development and will solve many of the existing issues. Maintenance and it’s associated costs should drop significantly, as should the overall build cost. Takeoff weight should be the same as landing weight, power won’t necessarily decrease with altitude/density, very high torque should be available in short bursts.

You make a good point that a nose wheel would go some way to solving a weight and balance issue on a conversion to electric. I wonder how it would look if the aircraft were redesigned from scratch?

I also think there is probably a reasonable demographic of potential sales that sit quietly in the shadows wishing for a nose wheel design but who don’t dare mention it for fear of offending anyone - effectively creating a form of survivorship bias in the posted comments.

[way_up_north]

....................

[zkelley2]

When it's truly viable for my mission, I'll be one of the first to have an electric airplane. Optimistically I might see that in my lifetime.

[Gerd Mannsperger]

The los in performance by having a nose wheel that close to the prop is significant -- talk about extra drag several times size and the drag of a tailwheel.

I run a Cessna 206 with 26inch mains and a 850 on the nose into a lot of Gravel bars and strips, It is definitely more capable than most here would realize. But it is very uninspiring.

I do prefer a Taildragger for that work, done right I can do the same landing in a small rough spot so much nicer and smoother on the taildragger where the Nose wheel aircraft gets

beat up much more. The short distance between the nose and mains make for rough role out and taxing on rough ground and hard braking is brutal on the nose wheel - Feels like Plane abuse.

Simply said Tailwheel aircraft open up a whole new Dimension of flight for the Nose dragger pilots. We just checked out 2 New guys on a 150/150 Texas taildragger on 26inch tires.

Once they get the hang of it a light comes on and they never look back. They are Back Country Junky's now

[S Lathrop]

My tail wheel experience is in a J3 Cub, Champ and a C180K.

Of all those planes, the Champ is the easiest to land because of the landing gear damping. The Cub and the C180 are more difficult because the gear is not damped and touching the ground too hard will complicate you landing effort. My best advise is be very quick to do a go around if the first touch is not close to perfect. When I started flying tail wheels, I did a lot of bounce and go as I attempted to land.

I got my endorsement in the Cub. And even though I had several hundred hours flying, I felt that the Cub was the best aircraft for me to built my stick and rudder skills. After that I had the chance to fly a C180 for about a year. I maintain my currency in a Champ.

[schu]

I got a good deal on my 170A. Most people insist on a B model, so the A is a bit cheaper, and it will force you to have good stick/rudder skills due to the lack of dihedral and adverse yaw.

[Chewie]

Cessna 140 here. Still early in my tailwheel training but it was inexpensive, very good mechanical condition, and easy to find an instructor. I haven't yet reached that stage where things click but I'm told the 140 is a great teacher. The other option I considered was the champ. Both fit my tall frame well because champs are just roomy and the yoke in the 140 clears my knees. If the 140 were a stick it would've been a no go.