Tailwheel time...does it matter what its in?

I have about 800 hours tailwheel and about 1200 tailwheel landings. In my way of thinking, my landing number indicates my tailwheel proficiency much more than my tailwheel hours…… but that’s just me.
 
I agree^^^. If only insurance companies saw it that way. Insurance makes everything more difficult.
 
Yes! I've been looking at that! If I build two of them and join them in the middle like a P-82 twin mustang, we can build multi time on the cheap!
 
Why stop there? Put the whole shebang on floats and build that rare AMES time.
 
Couple of kayaks and some ratchet straps....my mind is a raging torrent, filled with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives! I'll be qualified for the Grumman Goose in no time!
 
moparrob66 said:
Couple of kayaks and some ratchet straps....my mind is a raging torrent, filled with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives! I'll be qualified for the Grumman Goose in no time!
Click to expand...
I had a friend in college who designed an auto gyro canoe.
 
Like this guy and his amphib weight shift gyro? :oops:

 
dbahn said:
I'd sell the 172B and replace it with a comparable tailwheel model, or even something less expensive that still suits your needs. The fear of tailwheels is unfounded IMHO, and I always wonder what the difference is between a fifty hour TW pilot and a 500 hour one actually is.

In reality, hours shouldn't matter. Number of landings would be a better metric. I guess one of the concerns relates to the first solo and next few flights in an aircraft that only has one seat, but that should also relate to landings, not logged time.
Click to expand...

I always like the insurance forms that ask how much tailwheel time I have. My sailplane is a taildragger. I typically do up to a 100 hours per year in my sailplane, but rarely do more than 25 landings per year in my glider. They rarely specify time in an Airplane.

Same with Retract time.

Brian
 
moparrob66 said:
Couple of kayaks and some ratchet straps....my mind is a raging torrent, filled with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives! I'll be qualified for the Grumman Goose in no time!
Click to expand...
oooooooh, I am imaging Jet Cri-Cri and an Amphibious float, sort of a cross between the Jet Cri-Cri and a Grumman Duck
would be Multi-Engine, Turbine, Amphibious, Tail wheel time. Sorry my photoshop skills aren't quite up to making a composite image.


1725030613601.png1725030661948.png
 
If my homebrew affordaplane winged lawn chair has half of a VW up front and a surplus APU turbine pushing, why couldnt I log turbine time? Assuming I didnt burst into flames?
 
I dunno… gotta get a type rating? Or are you talking turbo prop pushing?

Would be an interesting type ride! We want details about how that goes!!
 
Due to the jankiness of such a sketchy contraption, I think a hybrid piston puller, jet pusher would be safest-ish if equipped with a BRS, fire suppression and a helmet. If a homebuilt is inspected by the FAA and registered E-AB, do they care what alterations are made after the initial flight testing is complete?
 
I think so. If you change yay so much, gotta redo the fly off period. Don’t really know what “yay so much” is though…
 
moparrob66 said:
Due to the jankiness of such a sketchy contraption, I think a hybrid piston puller, jet pusher would be safest-ish if equipped with a BRS, fire suppression and a helmet.
Click to expand...
Apparently the FAA disagrees. ;)
1725038739139.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I know where one is I wanna make into a house BAD.

This one doesn’t have the jet stc… but I got a line on one of those too!!! Hehehe

8C0CB62C-CFD2-4A8D-BA6E-EC69CA81E201.jpeg
 
dbahn said:
I get that, but should that world of experience have the perceived value it has for operations like towing and and cropdusting?

Shouldn't the number of landings be the parameter used for proficiency? You can fly a TW aircraft for two hours and get one landing, or fly the same aircraft practicing landings and log a dozen or more in the same time. For those pilots like the OP I feel like a lot of money is wasted building "hours" instead of proficiency.

At our local glider operation I was one of three tow pilots sharing duties in an operation doing 1500 to 1800 tows per year. This year one tow pilot had to withdraw for medical reasons then I developed brain cancer (permanently grounded). There aren't that many 500 hour TW pilots hanging around to fill the void, which is devastating to an operation like ours.

I have a lot of sympathy for the OP having to meet a standard that doesn't make complete sense to me.
Click to expand...
Well in the ag world you get the flight time and the cycles. The 500 hours is not unreasonable nor is it negotiable in most cases. Insurance companies drive the requirements and the actuarial data supports the requirements.

At least that’s the opinion I’ve developed after working as an ag pilot and owning an aircraft for ag.

Obviously five hundred hours of intense pattern work is better than the same hours on long cross country flights but the five hundred hours is still beneficial regardless of how it’s obtained.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Well in the ag world you get the flight time and the cycles. The 500 hours is not unreasonable nor is it negotiable in most cases. Insurance companies drive the requirements and the actuarial data supports the requirements.

At least that’s the opinion I’ve developed after working as an ag pilot and owning an aircraft for ag.

Obviously five hundred hours of intense pattern work is better than the same hours on long cross country flights but the five hundred hours is still beneficial regardless of how it’s obtained.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I always found taildragger landings to be more challenging after having flown a long cross country, so 500 hours with 100 landings would indicate a high level of proficiency in my mind.
 
The C-119 would put the Air in AirBnB? Lots of windows to offset the coziness of the space? Trucking would probably be the biggest expense for the project....unless you built a yuuge pedestal/staircase to set it on.
 
Yea get a Champ, it's a Cub for half the price and you can get 500 hours without ever going anywhere.
 
Champs are pretty cool...i'll read up on them!
 
Silvaire said:
Yea get a Champ, it's a Cub for half the price and you can get 500 hours without ever going anywhere.
Click to expand...
That’s no joke. One of my most memorable attempted cross country flights was in a Champ. I took off, climbed to my cruising altitude, and spent some time calculating if I would get to my next stop before sunset. (The plane was legal to fly at night but I don’t like night flight without a gyro instrument or two and anyhow I didn’t want my second ever landing in type to be a night landing.) I concluded that I wasn’t going to make it, so I turned back to my departure airport to land and spend the night. I hadn’t even made it to the airport fence.
 
iamtheari said:
That’s no joke. One of my most memorable attempted cross country flights was in a Champ. I took off, climbed to my cruising altitude, and spent some time calculating if I would get to my next stop before sunset. (The plane was legal to fly at night but I don’t like night flight without a gyro instrument or two and anyhow I didn’t want my second ever landing in type to be a night landing.) I concluded that I wasn’t going to make it, so I turned back to my departure airport to land and spend the night. I hadn’t even made it to the airport fence.
Click to expand...
I had a fiend who built up a Champ with a bigger engine to fly to Alaska. His slideshow had a picture of the same rock in a pass repeated several times. The wind through the pass zeroed out his ground speed for an hour before he decided to turn around…3 days in a row.
 
I have a 1946 Luscombe that came with all of the logbooks. Back in the early days people used to log their flights in those books. The original owner picked the plane up in Texas and immediately headed for Fairbanks Alaska. It took him 57 hours.
 
Silvaire said:
Yea get a Champ, it's a Cub for half the price and you can get 500 hours without ever going anywhere.
Click to expand...

During the hot & humid summer you can get your first hour just getting to pattern altitude ... :rofl:
 
Should point out that one of the mods here (Jesse Anglin) bought a Fly Baby a while back for some inexpensive taildragger time.

1726086506409.png

Ron Wanttaja
 
Daleandee said:
During the hot & humid summer you can get your first hour just getting to pattern altitude ... :rofl:
Click to expand...

My insurance checkout in a J4 cub consisted of me, the 300+lb instructor and his dog doing one lap around the pattern. We never got above 300ft AGL. neither one of us wanted to do another lap. He got out and did the insurance sign off for the J-4 for me.
Brian
 
wanttaja said:
Should point out that one of the mods here (Jesse Anglin) bought a Fly Baby a while back for some inexpensive taildragger time.

View attachment 133415

Ron Wanttaja
Click to expand...

Friend of mine logged a bunch of hours in a Pietenpol, I did a few laps around the pattern in it. Was a tight fit for my 230lb, 6ft frame. No way I could have got into the front seat. He sold it and bought a Fly Baby, but ended up selling it before he flew it. I thought the Fly Baby would probably have been nicer for me to fly.

either plane I thought about as cheap of tailwheel time as you could get.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
Plenty of elbow room in the affordaplane...
 
brcase said:
Friend of mine logged a bunch of hours in a Pietenpol, I did a few laps around the pattern in it. Was a tight fit for my 230lb, 6ft frame. No way I could have got into the front seat. He sold it and bought a Fly Baby, but ended up selling it before he flew it. I thought the Fly Baby would probably have been nicer for me to fly.

either plane I thought about as cheap of tailwheel time as you could get.
Click to expand...

Those little experimental peashooters are still pretty affordable.

I've been building tailwheel time in a Fisher Celebrity - my goal this summer has been to fly it 100 hours before the weather gets too cold and forces me back into a rental Skyhawk. The plane was built in 1995 and only had 103 hours on the Hobbs meter when I bought it late last summer, so I kind of consider myself a test pilot.

I purchased it for $14k, and it burns 5-5.5 GPH of mogas in an O-235-L2C. Very economical to operate, but a snug fit for me at 6'2" and 270 lbs. It's not a good way to get anywhere fast, but I did manage to fly my long commercial solo cross country in it. Logged 12.6 hours in the process! :rofl:

Helped preserve my stick & rudder skills while I was working on Instrument in a different airplane this summer, too.
 
Good deal! I think the small risk of losing money on buying, using, selling that is outweighed by the savings on tailwheel rental as well as reduced insurance costs on something worth insuring down the road.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top