Taildragger Transition Training Writeup

[tinman]

This past weekend, I completed the required 10 hour RV transition training with Kent Gorton near Atlanta GA in his RV-6. Since I have only around 150 total flying hours and now around 25 hours of tailwheel, the insurance folks wanted to make sure that I had a thorough transition process before they turned me loose with my -8. For other low-hour pilots, I will summarize my experience so that everyone knows my starting point...
Learned to fly in the C-152.
Then flew Grumman Cheetah for around 30 hours. (Loved it!)
Then stopped flying for many years.
Then started flying again in C-152.
Built a bit of time in Piper PA-28
Tailwheel endorsement in Luscombe. (Best money I ever spent...)
A little Citabria time
A little Cub time
Barely stayed current during the build...

Transition process:
First weekend got almost 5 hours...flew in horrible gusty crosswinds. I had not flown a taildragger in a few years. My initial impression was that the RV was a kitten compared to the Luscombe in so many ways. First, with the RV, you have a bit of "extra" power to help dig you out of situations where you might be in trouble in a lower-powered ship such as the Luscombe. The lower cg while on the ground makes the RV very stable and forgiving of some footwork that would have you heading for the weeds in other ships. Kent usually likes to do 1 1/2 hour flights twice a day with recovery time between hops so that you don't get too wrung out. I will admit that I was beat...the stress of learning a new aircraft coupled with the horrible winds and turbulence really put it to me. To add to the pleasure, I almost got airsick...
You are probably thinking that these were not good conditions for training. I would argue that because of these conditions, I now know that I am capable of managing the RV in crosswinds that I would not have considered possible in other planes that I have flown. This is comforting to keep in your back pocket while on a long cross country flight where the landing conditions may not be ideal...the key is to practice and build on past experience.

Weekend #2 allowed for me to pick up the remaining 6 hours. I arrived in ATL Friday evening. Kent and I did a briefing as the sun set. We took off into calm air and started working on the various landings which required mastering:
Three point
Wheel
RV-8 squatting wheel landing (A cross between a 3 point and wheel landing)
No Flap
Short Field
Rough Field
Slips
Simulated engine failures
Go-arounds
Night 3-point and wheel (This was an eye-opener)
Conversions- where you bungle a wheel landing and must convert to 3-point

[tinman]

We then spent some time working on simulated engine-outs. Kent demonstrated some neat tricks on how to shoe-horn into a strip if you arrive too high. He would pull the power away from the airport pattern so that I would have to work out the geometry of the approach while gliding rather than just flying the standard pattern.

Next came the spin series. We saved this for last knowing that I would probably get airsick. We climbed up to 10k and had a blast. I was getting cocky since we had done seven and I still felt fine. After number eight, I got the hot flash which told me that we were done. We retreated back to the airport and shot a couple of more landings to calm my stomach down and we then flew back to Mallards and called it a day.

Kent spent quite a bit of time going over what to look for in Phase 1...
We also talked about the care and feeding of an RV...

The training was expensive, but I consider it to be cheap insurance considering what the penalty for failure will be...

[pierre smith]

...and it sounds like you got what very few others do...spin recovery training to boot. In the grand scheme of things, transition training should be considered as just another part of the build.

Congratulations,