Originally Posted by
WLIU
A CFI who says that wheel landings are easier is showing his inexperience. I am sure that he knows the FAA guidance, but your friend will be better served with a CFI that has several hundred hours of tailwheel experience in a variety of airplanes.
First, as you likely know, three point landings allow the airplane to be placed on the runway at the slowest speed practical. So the usual syllabus starts with those. The student gets to see the visual picture of the 3 point attitude, learns how to make the airplane absolutely straight on the runway, and the airplane contacts with minimum energy, which means that it heads for the weeds more slowly when the student does not get it right. The last factor gives the instructor pilot more time to apply a correction before a disaster occurs. The flip side of that is that an instructor pilot sitting in the back has a much more restricted view of the action and so needs to really have a good seat of the pants feel for the airplane. The current CFI likely does not have that and so wants the tail up for a better view. Your CFI is likely using this visual crutch to justify his/her training approach.
Wheel landings require a higher speed touchdown. The airplane has more energy to bounce and dive for the weeds. This makes it harder, not easier, for the new tailwheel pilot.
When I do wheel landings, my mental image is of "painting" the wheels onto the runway. As mentioned above, you can try to fly down the runway and not touch the main wheels. Try to find the slowest speed that allows this. Should be about 10mph above your normal 3 point landing speed.
Crosswinds complicate everything. So start out on days with the wind as closely aligned with the runway as possible. As you know, the fuselage has to be straight down the centerline of the runway and a wing must be dipped so that there is zero sideways drift. This is true for both 3 point and wheel landings. Once you get the hang of wheel landings it can be fun to roll on the upwind wheel for a while before lowering the tail.
In a wheel landing, many airplanes will need just a little (emphasize little) forward stick to hold the wheels on the ground. You are at an airspeed that has the airplane still flying with its wheels on the ground. You let the airplane slow and then fly the tail down to the ground. If you start to lower the tail at too high a speed you will lift off and be flying again.
Why do we do wheel landings? On really windy days, we need the rudder to keep straight on the runway. In the 3 point attitude the fuselage blanks some of the rudder and we have less control. Plus, the slower we are, the more we are affected by gusts. So if we have enough runway, we fly a higher airspeed on approach and touch down because we know that the wind is lowering our ground speed and we keep the tail up so that we have as much rudder control as the airplane can give us. My personal rule is the higher the wind, the higher my tail is on touchdown.
A long time ago, a Provincetown-Boston Airlines (PBA) DC-3 took a couple of tries to get the main wheels down onto the runway at Provincetown on a really really windy day. As the pilot rolled down the runway with his tail in the air, he realized that it was too windy to put the tail down and successfully taxi to the terminal. Pushed the throttles forward and hopped over to Boston.
Hope this helps. If you can find a CFI with 4 digits of tailwheel time in his or her logbook, your friend should move up the learning curve much faster.
Best of luck,
Wes
N78PS