RV Landings

I am a 250TT VFR pilot. I have all of 5 hours tail time on C170. Maybe 20 landings.
Curious the learning curve for landing a RV 3 or 4? Are they difficult. Any suggestions?

cap41 said:

I am a 250TT VFR pilot. I have all of 5 hours tail time on C170. Maybe 20 landings.
Curious the learning curve for landing a RV 3 or 4? Are they difficult. Any suggestions?

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Here are some threads on landings that have been running for a couple of weeks:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=114078&highlight=bounce

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=115363&highlight=bounce

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=114600&highlight=bounce

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=114237&highlight=bounce

These should give you quite a bit to consider.

Tail landings

I just bought an RV-3. It is not difficult to land
with prior training. The money is well spent on transition
Training in an RV-6. Good trainer for the 3&4.
I had no tail wheel time.

Not easy...

I'll give you a perspective that is not often heard here. My experience is similar to yours. I have about 250 TT, all in a 1959 Cessna 172. I'm just about finished with an RV-9A.

I've been doing transition training in an RV-6A. I have about 7 hours training so far, and I'm going for another day of training in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping to be able to complete the training with one more day.

It has been surprisingly difficult learning to land an RV-6A, with my limited experience. It could be that I had some habits that are making the transition more difficult than for most. I'm to the point where takeoffs and flying the pattern and approach are safe and consistent. The trouble I'm having is the last part of the landing, typically called the flare and touch down. I'm really struggling leveling off at a consistent height about the runway and then bleeding off speed in a gradual flare. In the nose wheel model the deck angle is such that you lose the runway straight over the nose very soon in the flare, and have to look down to the corner of the runway. Also the controls are so light that it is easy to get the nose too high, my natural response is to respond quickly in the opposite direction, but I usually over react. Again the controls are so light, compared to a C172.

Honestly I was very discouraged after my first day of training and was seriously thinking I couldn't learn to fly an RV. My second day was better, especially in the morning. The afternoon was again a little rough. There was some crosswind in the afternoon that added to the challenge.

I've seen so many times on this forum, when the question is asked, the response is "RVs are easy to land". I discussed this with my transition trainer. His response is that they are easy once you learn. But learning takes more work than most people are willing to admit. He's seen 30,000 hour airline pilots that had to work at it to learn to land an RV.

It would be absolutely crazy not to get transition training. I don't know how people learned to fly RVs before transition training existed. They are so different than a C172.

Just my two cents.

Michael-

Michael Burbidge said:

I've seen so many times on this forum, when the question is asked, the response is "RVs are easy to land". I discussed this with my transition trainer. His response is that they are easy once you learn. But learning takes more work than most people are willing to admit. He's seen 30,000 hour airline pilots that had to work at it to learn to land an RV.

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I share your perspective. I accumulated over 1400 hours in 30 years of flying tricycle-gear planes before getting my tailwheel endorsement and buying an RV-8. I can land any trike like nobody's business, but transitioning to landing tailwheel airplanes has been very tough for me. Even after getting transition training in an RV-7, my first few landings in the 8 were terrible and I became afraid to fly it. So now I'm working to get about 30 landings done with an instructor in an Xtreme Decathlon. (I can't get dual in my 8 because it has no rear controls.) It's been work, but it's starting to pay off. I think the biggest challenge for me is adjusting to how feather-light the RV's controls are. My other plane is a longbody Mooney and it's very heavy on the controls.

I think RV's are easy to fly. I have a grand total of three take offs and landings and feel very comfortable flying the 7A and 8A I have flown. I think the issue you have is that all of your time is in a C-172 land-o-matic. If you had some time in very light aircraft such as a light sport, a cub or an ultralight, you would think that an RV flew like it was on rails. The C-172 is one of the only planes that you can fly down to 20 feet, chop the throttle and hold aft elevator and still walk away from. Too many pilots have bad habits because 172s land themselves. Stay positive and keep practicing and it will happen. Remember when landing a 172 seemed hard during initial training?

I only had 75hrs TT in tricycles and had not flown in 10 years when I purchased my built RV-8 early this year. This spring I got my recurrency training in a Citabria 16hrs and flew to Oregon to get 8 hours with Mike Seager in his RV-7. When I got back I solo'd my RV-8 with a total of 28hrs of tail time and had no problems. I've tried a few 3 point landing but they were not pretty, I find the tail low wheel landing to be too easy.

Will I give up on the 3 points... no, but the more I fly the -8 the better I feel and will keep working on them.

I just love my -8, I still giggle every time I fly her.... even after 16 hrs!!

Michael Burbidge said:

He's seen 30,000 hour airline pilots that had to work at it to learn to land an RV.

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Airline pilots can take longer and have quite a bit more difficulty transitioning to little aerobatic/sport types than student pilots. It's a whole lot helluva lot of time spent flying (mostly hands off) in an environment that is the complete antithesis of handling a tiny little sporty type. A whole lot of long ingrained habits to unlearn/relearn. Airline flying is definitely no advantage here. Greyhound bus drivers who have never driven a stick-shift will surely have no advantage when it comes to learning to smoothly drive a stick shift Honda S2000 around an autocross course. Actually, that's a bad example - Greyhound drivers have a whole lot more 'hands on controls' time.

luddite42 said:

Airline pilots can take longer and have quite a bit more difficulty transitioning to little aerobatic/sport types than student pilots. It's a whole lot helluva lot of time spent flying (mostly hands off) in an environment that is the complete antithesis of handling a tiny little sporty type.

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Interesting observation.

Curious. I found the C172 that I trained in to be MUCH more difficult to fly and land than any of the RV's I've flown. Perhaps because I spent most of my pre-certificate time in RV's that I'm just very familiar with how they handle and land. I never really got the hang of landing the 172 very smoothly...not like I can land the RV-10 anyway. I think it's all in experience. So keep working on the transition training and don't get discouraged. Everything will just jive one day and you'll get it!

I've checked out quite a few jet pilots for FBO rentals. All good pilots. All nailed their numbers around the patch. Then they flare and FU at about 20 feet. They just need a little tuning.

Bought my -6 with about 300 hours in my logbook, all but about 80 hours of that was tailwheel time. I still needed five hours of dual in an RV-6, to satisfy the insurance company but also to get my brain working ahead of the airplane. It'll take a few hours to get used to moving 50% faster than most of the GA aircraft in the area, so you have to think faster than you're used to.

You'll get it though, it's just practise. I'm at 500 hours now and think I have it reasonably under control. At least I haven't bent anything yet.

aerhed said:

I've checked out quite a few jet pilots for FBO rentals. All good pilots. All nailed their numbers around the patch. Then they flare and FU at about 20 feet. They just need a little tuning.

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I'm not a jet pilot, but that described me! I say described because this morning I did 8 wheel landings in the Xtreme Decathlon and nailed all but two. It's starting to come together.

One epiphany I've had during all this dual I'm getting is that after flying "left seat" for 30 years my brain and eyes had a hard time adjusting to the centerline sight picture. I was landing the XD and my 8 as if I was sitting in the "left" seat. Sounds ridiculous but it's true... your brain works in funny ways. The result is that I was carrying too much left rudder into the flare and then veering left on touchdown. My instructor had me do some low pass drills to try to break me of it. It worked and suddenly my flares, touchdowns and rollouts straightened themselves out.

When I first started working on my tailwheel endorsement I was dismissive of all the talk about "unlearning bad habits." Well, turned out to be very true and a big deal for me.