I started with taildraggers and tried out one trike.....but I find landing the trike in grass sucks. The front wheel will bite in the grass and a nice landing turns into a backflip.....on a hard surface its fine. My taildraggers I can ROG from grass with ease and land. As for my trike......it has floats now and makes a nice little "pond jumper"
Mike
Take a trike and a taildragger and put them side by side....take away there nose gear and tailwheel and leave the main gear, what do you have???? A seesaw with the main gear acting as the fulcrum. So setup is very important to both. Anyway, ground handling is important but whats more important is the planes handling in the air. And that nose gear = drag compared to the little tailwheel.
Mike If you have retracts.....its a different story ;-)
If you don't mind me butting in here, could you please explain what you mean by a tail dragger? That is, do you mean one that has a steerable tail wheel or just a skid?
David
PS Is there any >
Yup. Nose draggers have the steering up front where it can get broken.. .
Taildragger is otherwise known as "conventional" gear. It can have a tailwheel, skid, or any other device at the rear of the fuselage. A plane with a nosewheel is a "tricycle" gear. Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"
snipped-for-privacy@netzero.net (Mike R.) wrote in message news:...
We teach a technique in full-scale called "soft/rough" takeoffs and landings. I taught it to my son when he flew his RC trike, and he had no more grass drag problems. On takeoff, full up-elevator is applied as the throttle is opened. The nosewheel will come up if the airplane is set up properly, and the pilot adjusts the elevator to keep the nosewheel just off the surface as speed builds. This will require less and less elevator input. The airplane will fly off when it's ready, without further nose-up (or "rotation," as we call it) and climbout is normal. In some cases the airplane can lift off at very low speed, and after liftoff the airplane is held very low to the ground in ground effect to build speed for the climb. If the airplane has flaps, 10 or 20 degrees will aid greatly. A soft-field landing involves a low approach speed and a nose-high touchdown using some power, After touchdown, the nose is held off with the elevator while power is reduced gradually. The risk of noseover goes way down using these techniques, and you'll be surprised how short your airplane can take off using them. As I've said before, some private-pilot groundschool would make better RC pilots. There's a whole world of information out there, and it would be a great way to spend a few winter evenings. The applicable subjects would be Principles of Flight, Weight and Balance, a bit of Weather, and Maneuvers such as climbs, descents, turns, stalls, spins and the rest of it. You wouldn't need Air Law, Navigation or the rest of it. You can fly the airplane, but do you know WHY it behaves as it does sometimes? And how to avoid doing that again? Problem is to find a school that doesn't charge so much.
Dan
I like tail draggers cause I'm lazy and don't want to hook up the nose wheel!!! Less trouble for me. Eddie Fulmer
PS if you're landing on the nose wheel you ain't doing it right!!
For the price of an hour of rider-scale classroom time, one could take SWMBO out for dinner and have enough left to snag a copy of "Stick And Rudder".
Although unstable on the ground, taildraggers are great fun and eminently controllable with practice. I trained on glow taildraggers (modified Tucano OS52 4-stroke?) and have only had 3 tricycle u/c planes (H/W Trainer and 2 lge Tucanos w 90 2-stroke) compared to 7+ 'draggers (H/W trainer, 4 mid-wing sports (46 2-strokes), 3 R.O.G'ing electric parkflyers: GWS Beaver, Kyosho Spree Sport, Wingdragon. Tricycle u/c is like driving a car - 'dragger is like flying a Spitfire (watch that swing!). You need a little toe-in for stability. A steerable tailwheel (attached to rudder) is nice but not always needed. Start with a little right rudder and up elevator (to avoid nose-over) as you overcome grass resistance. Throttle up gradually to minimise torque/swing effects. Let elevator go neutral as you build speed. Small timely corrections with rudder are important - so relax those thumbs. Big late overcorrections make ground loops. The plane may lift off with neutral elevator... otherwise apply gentle up. It's also very important to take off and land into the wind.
"And then there is the dreaded TAILWHEEL! Can it be mastered? Will the airplane willfully ground loop the instant it is untied? Can only super-beings fly airplanes so equipped? What a crock! We forget that the nosedragger, taildragger controversy didn't even exist until the 152/172/Tri-Pacers became prevalent enough as trainers that a generation of pilots was born with dead feet. Every pilot before them just took the taildragger for granted. That's the way airplanes were, so that's the way they flew them. Today, there are enough tailwheel schools and instructors that getting training isn't that difficult. Depending on the individual, figure about six hours average to transition with another couple of hours of post-solo dual spent working in nasty crosswinds as insurance. There is no magic to the tailwheel. All it requires is some of the basic skills you were supposed to develop in the first place and, once you've become comfortable with the tailwheel, you'll discover an entire new world open to you." from
Toe-in will add instability in most taildraggers. As the swing begins, the weight will shift toward the outside wheel, and if it's toed inward the turn will tighten and increase the rate of swing. Toeing the wheels out a bit can help reduce the instability, but the best practice is no misalignment at all. I used to fly a Champ that had a misaligned left main. It was turned in a bit, and the net result was some overall toe-in. I had to touch down with the nose cocked left about three degrees to get the line of travel symmetrically between the wheel tracklines so it wouldn't leap to the right on touchdown and try to go squirreling off the pavement. Even then I had to pay special attention to prevent ANY swing. Grass was easier. Other Champs and Citabrias I have flown had their wheels properly aligned and didn't have the bad behavior. The wheel alignment on the old Champ oleo gear required bending the strut to straighten the wheel so it often was left alone and tolerated. The newer machines have spring gear and shims to adjust alignment. Misaligned gear on the big Cessna taildraggers can be exciting indeed. Models usually just require bending some wire, but the slop in the bearings and the easily-twisted wire can make the wheels do their own thing anyway during ground ops.
Dan
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