contactflying wrote:Good point Quis. If we teach dynamically and proactively taking the slack out of the cables or push pull tubes to nose gear during taxi, takeoff, landing and to wag the tail just a bit on final, there is really no difference. And to keep the target between our toes. Slow ground loop to align the sideloader and be pointed the right way for takeoff, maybe the only difference.

The design of the airplane is to fly. Roll on the ground, not so much.

Yes, that's how I was taught. If the nose gear on my PA-22 didn't touch down exactly on the third stripe, and if my finals weren't perfect, I had to go around and do it again. When I transitioned to TW, it was so easy. I don't know if I'm as good as some guys who can always land in the same three ruts in their pasture every time, but my cousin's instructor can't even land on a normal width dirt road which just seems wrong and gives my insecure ego an unneeded boost.

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Bigrenna wrote:Not to spoil all the 182-love that's being bandied about, and at the risk of sounding like a snob... there is nothing like flying a TW bird. When I fly a nose wheel, I just feel like all that I'm doing is practicing for the next time I go fly a nose wheel bird... When I fly a TW bird, I feel like I'm actually "flying."

As mentioned above, the 182 is a great solid flying bird. But like a Honda civic, when it comes down to it, its just a Civic... bland.

my .02

Horse hockey. As one with quite a few hours WORKING tailwheel airplanes, I will tell you you are full of it. Hands down.

MTV

Touching down with nose wheel or tailwheel exactly on the centerline seems overkill, I guess, on wide runways. When using a county road in the Midwest, where the power poles are close and there is no shoulder, it feels so much better with the centerline between the toes. The couple of feet left of center, resulting from using the prop as the front sight, will send the TW toward the ditch and put both types a couple of feet left of center.

contactflying wrote:Touching down with nose wheel or tailwheel exactly on the centerline seems overkill, I guess, on wide runways. When using a county road in the Midwest, where the power poles are close and there is no shoulder, it feels so much better with the centerline between the toes. The couple of feet left of center, resulting from using the prop as the front sight, will send the TW toward the ditch and put both types a couple of feet left of center.

Yeah, but if you can do it on a 100' wide runway, you can do it pretty much anywhere. It was a pain to learn, but I'm grateful that I did.

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The tailwheel airplane is the better trainer, considering airplane only and not teacher/technique, only because it almost demands net zero longitudinal misalignment on takeoff, centerline extended short final, touchdown, and roll out. Net zero misalignment means constant rudder movement, dynamic proactive rudder movement. Reactive rudder movements works but is not net zero. We can jab back to longitudinal alignment but that doesn't put us back on the centerline. And it takes more iterations to master. And we can't land on the county road that way.

Good control technique is possible with either gear configuration. Net zero longitudinal misalignment (rudder), exactly six inch AGL ground effect on takeoff (elevator), directing the nose to target and keeping the wings level (rudder,) net zero glide angle misalignment (throttle) is not super pilot stuff. It is actually easier than the alternative with either airplane. We just have to find the technique that will get the better result, default it, and get better with each iteration.

I have always considered the 182 the first 'real airplane' in the Cessna line up. It is good. It will probably go to most any ranch strip, and cover ground fairly well for cross country.

As I have opinionated in other threads... the firewall gear attach, and consequently tunnel it will take out if you dork it, are the weak points. It is a good airplane, it is a compromise (at best) as a bush beater. NO ONE but you can tell you, if you will grow into adventures that will compromise those, and if you're asking people on the http://www... you may not be able to answer that either.

Since we don't know much about you, I'd offer first pricing a 206, or 205. Either will do everything better than a 182 if you can swing the extra coin, and some things (many actually) as good or better than a 180/5.

A 205/6 will not have as much ramp appeal as a 180/5 as bigrenna suggest (and I agree), and will not follow one in to a bolder pile as well, but will do so much else better, and fit what little we know about your mission profile better that it would most certainly be the way I would suggest.

Compared to what you are contemplating, it will be faster, it will be slower, and it will haul way, WAY more, in to a ranch strip.

Take care, Rob

Mapleflt wrote:I call photo shopped, that nose wheel is a prop strike just wait to happen

Actually quite a real STC. Met - co also had kits for 120/140/170's. (STC SA4-916) Not sure how many were actually done though, but enough that it helped Cessna decide it was a smart business decision to build the 172.

Horse hockey. As one with quite a few hours WORKING tailwheel airplanes, I will tell you you are full of it. Hands down.

MTV

Man. I have no idea how I could have gotten that mixed up... You're right Mike. Nose wheels are the same and just as cool. Thanks for clearing that up.

Tail draggers are just sexier, its that simple. What's that saying again, Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder

If you’re making long trips and willing to consider tricycle gear, think hard about a Bonanza. They cost about the same to buy as an IFR 182. They’ll go anywhere you’d take a 182 unless you have a YouTube channel, get there 30 knots faster, and do it on 12-13gph, with no risk of carb ice. And even though there are a million of them, you can’t land a V-tail anywhere without someone paying it a compliment.

Speaking of speed, before you compare still-air time-speed-distance calculations, remember that there’s always a headwind and it’s often 20 knots or more. So, you’re not comparing ground speeds of 135 (optimistically) and 165 (conservatively), it’s more like 115 and 145.

But they aren’t perfect. The aft cg problem is real and requires an attentive pilot. It has low wings, the front windows don’t open, and it only has one door. No one makes replacement ruddervators, so hangar rash or corrosion could send you to the boneyard in a panic. And while I think the Bonanza tail-wag thing is grossly overstated by internet experts who’ve never ridden in one, nothing is more stable in flight than a Cessna 18x.

182s are nice. Skywagons are awesome. But I think a lot of people pass over an airplane that’ll do what they actually need an airplane to do, in order to buy one that might do what they fancy they might eventually do.

Bigrenna wrote:

Horse hockey. As one with quite a few hours WORKING tailwheel airplanes, I will tell you you are full of it. Hands down.

MTV

Man. I have no idea how I could have gotten that mixed up... You're right Mike. Nose wheels are the same and just as cool. Thanks for clearing that up.

Greg, I wasn’t referring to “cool”, whatever that is. I was referring to functionality, ease of operation, comfort and safety.

I flew 180/185s for years, because that’s what the boss handed me the keys to. When the last 185 went away, they gave me the keys to an older, well refurbished 206.

I groaned initially, but within a week, I figured I’d died and gone to heaven.

Not long after, one of our “Super heroes” from Anchorage was hauling fuel into the Alaska Range for a helicopter project......I know, I know, BUT very shortly, that pretty nasty narrow “strip” but him and he took the gear off the 185.

They still needed fuel, so they asked me if I’d bring it in in another 185. No. But, I told them I’d take a look with the 206. That narrow strip with a dogleg was a piece of cake with the 206 (with appropriate tires, of course), but too sketchy for a 185 in my opinion. I’m pretty sure I could have got in and out of there in a 185, but it was relatively easy in a 206. One way, rough, uphill and a dogleg. Fortunately it wasn’t very high.

Cool? Who cares? I’d have been sweating bullets in a 185 there.

MTV

I'm with Rob and MTV on this one. And Greg, come on, you know as far as flying is concerned it doesn't matter where the wheels are- not really. On the ground yea there is nothing sexier than a tail dragger. In fact I have to put on a shemagh and dark glasses if I'm going to get into a nose dragger.

I flew a friends Evolution once. Awesome plane. He landed it. And when he did he touched on the mains and then pushed the stick forward aggressively- scared the crap out of me. Of course the training wheel up front did its job, but man that's just not cool to do to a tail dragger pilot.

As far as landing on the centerline on a hundred foot wide runway in a tail dragger; I did that once in my Stearman and could see nothing but a sea of concrete. How I got away without a ground loop I'll never know. In those unfortunate times when I'm landing on concrete if it's wide I'm landing near the edge so I can keep it straight when the tail drops.

Now to the really important question, for my next plane should I get a Beaver or a Skyraider?

Same here MTV. Most of my engine failures have been in tailwheel crop dusters. The ones to levees and power pole confined roads would have been safer and less exciting in tricycle airplanes. I chose a soft field rather than really narrow dike and put a Pawnee on its back. Nose gear would have probably worked out better either way. I put a 172 in on a road and missed my pipeline's steel pole mounted mile marker with the left wing by two feet. Crosswind and rain was ninety degrees at about 30 knots. Super tailwheel pilot would have had no problem until he slowed down on the surface. Maybe just straight into the wind and eat the fence. I swerved with a Cardinal enough to miss mesquite trees but not tip. It would have ground looped a tailwheel airplane. Might have worked out OK?

Barnstormer wrote:As far as landing on the centerline on a hundred foot wide runway in a tail dragger; I did that once in my Stearman and could see nothing but a sea of concrete. How I got away without a ground loop I'll never know. In those unfortunate times when I'm landing on concrete if it's wide I'm landing near the edge so I can keep it straight when the tail drops.

Yeah, flying without a license in an unregistered plane isn't the only reason that most pilots on the high plains never touch a hard surface.

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I taught two brothers, one a part time preacher, to spray. Neither had any paper whatsoever. And the crop duster who hired them didn't want me to sign anything. Very good pilots, both.

It really is mission.

My airplane is a toy and I am not rational about it. A 182 would do everything that I do with mine better. But it would be way less fun, and I am too insecure to fly anything with a nose wheel.

If I actually had to get anything done with it I might choose something else.

And 182 really is a great piece of design.

daedaluscan wrote:It really is mission.

My airplane is a toy and I am not rational about it. A 182 would do everything that I do with mine better. But it would be way less fun, and I am too insecure to fly anything with a nose wheel.

If I actually had to get anything done with it I might choose something else.

And 182 really is a great piece of design.

Possibly one of the most honest answers ever provided by a pilot that flies a tailwheel airplane. Haha.

I’ve never really flown anything but TWs so I can’t speak to how different they fly. However, insuring a TW is way more expensive than trike, basically no private pilot NEEDS a tw airplane for the missions they fly, and because of the current tw fad the purchase price of a TW is more than that of a trike.

If I was an intelligent individual I would sell my airplane and buy a 205/6. It’d have a better suited airplane for the missions I actually fly and it quite possibly would cost me less to own. But for most private pilots airplanes are a toy and as we all know, kids don’t play with toys they don’t like.

When I was young, tailwheel was conventional and insurance companies didn't care what kind of gear we had. We tore tailwheel airplanes up two to one, but rebuilt them cheap. They are still torn up two to one, but the cost to repair makes them as expensive as round engines.

I just insured my plane and had a long chat with the broker. He said that anecdotally there have been a lot of claims recently that he put down to lack of currency. It’s probably only going to get worse.

[email protected] wrote:.... I am looking into plane purchase for a dual role. I have a job that pays for some of my flying but would like to still be able to fly into a few of my friends ranches. I know all of the hard core backcountry stuff is different but for what I am looking at does anyone see a problem with a good duel role 182?

I am a tailwheel addict.
Almost all my time is in taildraggers, and 3 of the 4 airplanes I've owned were taildraggers.
My current mount is a 1953 C180.
That said, there ain't a thing wrong with a good 182.
As previously said, it'll easily meet your mission requirements.
Here's a quote from a GA News article about a guy whose airplane has been in his family since about 1960:
“It gets up and goes 130 knots without any trouble at all, and then lands on these little postage stamps.”
He happened to be writing about a C180 but it could just as easily been about a 182.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2021/01 ... he-family/

I'd say go for it!