Whenever two or more of you shall gather....

So the other day I was in an hour of intense psychotherapy (known as touch-and-goes in the Champ) and decided that I'd work on wheel landings.

Wind was four miles an hour variabling in a way that would inspire Steven Hawkings to develop an entirely new set of ideas on chaos theory, the "puffy air with double gust" set of equations - and the results were as to be expected.

Ah, left and right crosswinds with head and tail winds all within three hundred feet....and some nice thermals to go with it; my inner child wasn't soothed so much as insisting that he be allowed to go back inside while Daddy dealt with the bad things.

Nothing bent and nary a bad word used; indeed, I invented the soon-to-be-trademarked tail-bounce (tm) wheel landing and was quite proud of myself.

Tired of innovation, I eventually just resigned myself to three pointers for the last two of the set and put the Champ to rest in the hangar. We both seemed to have a nice smile about ourselves.

Walking into the FBO I discovered why the winds and my own airmanship had conspired together for an interesting set of manuevers.....four pilots smirking at me over their coffee.

"That you in the Champ?"
"Yep."
"Sure is a nice looking plane, anyhow."

:P

If I'd of been greasing the landings there wouldn't have been a soul around, as is usual for a Thursday morning.

Been there, done that.. the joys of a taildragger. Definitely a good feeling though when you nail a decent wheeler though!

Sounds like a lot of fun, sadly my Champ is on saw horses undergoing a full restoration.

Hey Frank, Great Story!

Back in 2001, just b/4 the whole 9/11 thing I was working on getting my tail wheel endorsement at Moriane Airpark just south of Dayton, OH. They have one runway running east/west along the banks of the Miami river. My instructor was a fearless 20 something who was very patient dealing with an old tri-gear trained pilot. We were using a Bellanca version of the Champ and after about 4 hours of training I could "land" it and keep it on the runway...sorta of. Anyway, one Saturday my son was visiting, and decided to come along to watch Dad practice at Moraine. Well, the FBO has this really nice big wooden deck that provides a great gathering spot for airport bums to watch the action. On this particular day we had a mixed and variable southerly cross-wind and coupled with the elevated runway dike at one end made for some interesting air flow.
We put in a good hours work on bang and bounce, after landing and closing out the paperwork my son joined me, and on the ride home he was laughing telling me about all the comments and grades I got by the boys on the deck! At least you didn't have a peanut gallery with live betting and score cards!


Joe
:P

Joe, you didn't do too bad if the other guys didn't say anything to you. My (limited) experience says that pilots only talk about other pilots when they REALLY screw up or do something REALLY good. The average or simply competent might get a smirk but no comment.

We had some localized weather (read "where the hell did that come from") a few months ago and it went from official calm to 14 kts gusting to 21 (direct crosswind, natch) in about twenty minutes. Not so fun in the Champ, as one knows, so I called it done for the day and frowned my way into the second best landing I'd ever done.*

One of the guys out there is a beaucoup time Champ driver (forty year's worth) and gave me something better than any medal - a handshake and a "that's how that gets done."

* The best landing resulted in me fast taxiing down most of the runway swearing as I waited for the wheels to touch the pavement.

Well I'm not really familiar with the kind of wind conditions you get in the "Heart of Dixie", but here in the upper mid-west 14kts gusting to 21 or more is common in spring and fall...summer tends to be lighter and then comes winter and that is our windy season. I"m a club flyer and usually use our 58 TriPacer which has interesting approach and landing qualities. You can fly it at 80MPH at any altitude and its solid, but if you drop the power back to 1500RPM it will drop like a rock! I've been flying this aircraft for about 3 years and get okay landings under most conditions, but a really good "greaser" is rare. When I switch to the club Archer I look like
an "ace" on most landings, thanks to that monster stablator. One of the things I like about flying is all the variation we get from day to day in flying approach to landings, never a dull day!

Joe
:cool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joe LaMantia

Hey Frank, Great Story!

Back in 2001, just b/4 the whole 9/11 thing I was working on getting my tail wheel endorsement at Moriane Airpark just south of Dayton, OH. They have one runway running east/west along the banks of the Miami river. My instructor was a fearless 20 something who was very patient dealing with an old tri-gear trained pilot. We were using a Bellanca version of the Champ and after about 4 hours of training I could "land" it and keep it on the runway...sorta of. Anyway, one Saturday my son was visiting, and decided to come along to watch Dad practice at Moraine. Well, the FBO has this really nice big wooden deck that provides a great gathering spot for airport bums to watch the action. On this particular day we had a mixed and variable southerly cross-wind and coupled with the elevated runway dike at one end made for some interesting air flow.
We put in a good hours work on bang and bounce, after landing and closing out the paperwork my son joined me, and on the ride home he was laughing telling me about all the comments and grades I got by the boys on the deck! At least you didn't have a peanut gallery with live betting and score cards!


Joe
:P

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Great story Joe! I trained there and fly there quite a bit, so I can totally "see" this story. Guess I should keep my tailwheel practice elsewhere! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frank Giger

* The best landing resulted in me fast taxiing down most of the runway swearing as I waited for the wheels to touch the pavement.

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Had that same sort of experience just this week - the plane's got to be down by now. So let the tail dip a little just to bounce it and prove it had already been rolling...
:D

Enjoy those type of landings = they come once every 10,532 attempts....