Ryan,

Maybe I missed it...but how much tailwheel time do you have logged? Relating back to my previous post (and posts), your insurance is probably going to require ~20 hours of dual or a significant number of time in type to get you signed off solo for your insurance. I've owned 3 180/185's and the open pilot warranty on my insurance has always been about 750 hours TW, 100 time in type. Think about that for a second. Those numbers aren't just made up....they are based on actuary tables; cold hard statistics of why there are so many wadded up 180's.

I support anyone pursuing their instrument rating; but you have to get something like 50 hours of cross country first nowadays correct? I'm sure you are a sharp guy and a good stick. For reference, I got my tailwheel endorsement in a Supercub, then bought my Pacer and flew 100 hours. Towed gliders in an Ag Wagon for a few hundred. All my time is in TW airplanes. I still find my 185 a handful sometimes on pavement in the wind, it's to be respected.

I'm not saying you have to be Chuck Yeager to fly a 185, but the numbers show it takes considerable experience and training. It's obviously a free country, but you've come on here to ask for advice in several threads. That's my 2 cents. I think you are going to have a really nice 185 here in a few weeks to fly...but if you don't start getting TW experience it wont be the last time that plane is in Idaho getting rebuilt. The statistics and history are crystal clear on that and not on your side.

Bill

pilotryan wrote:
1, Fly a pretty girl to breakfast.

I'll start messing with that when all of my ducks are in the same pond... everyone seems to think that a lady friend is going to lighten my wallets. I wonder why they think that...
Ryan[/quote]


Hmmm, I am guessing (yeah, just guessing, LMAO!!) that maybe a few of us on here have a little experience in answering that statement with just a tiny bit of truth.


Meant to also mention that Bill said it much more eloquently then I was trying to say it. You really should be concentrating on trying to build some TW time on the cheap, before you try to learn in a mega gallon per hour 185. Just my opinion but why not try and learn how to use your feet in an underpowered trainer before jumping into that 185. I am not saying you can't do it, it just seems prudent to get some basics down before you are overwhelmed. You can probably find a rental TW trainer (cost wise) for not much difference than that 185 is going to cost in fuel, especially considering what the insurance will cost you as a low time TW pilot. Something Bill mentioned. My first TW was a Champ, and the insurance was considerably higher than my 172. Now that I have a few hundred hours TW and float time, the insurance is much more reasonable. My $0.02.

I would highly recommend flying a Cessna 150 for a while. Use it to learn energy management in.

I would say start out buying or borrowing a Cessna 150D, manual flaps, 5's on the mains, 5's on the nose. Explore the envelope with it. Learn about ground effect, fly it at gross weight, gain some experience, learn to use those flaps, learn to fly it light, fly it right and fly it tight!

Trust me, you will never be bored. Every time you fly, bank the experience. Make a note of the length of the airstrip, the condition of the field, the temp, the altitude, how the aircraft performed depending on all of these factors, including weight. Land it there at your home strip, over and over again. Branch out and develop your own local homeschool course, but pay close attention to the incredible wisdom on this site. Filter and have fun with the banter, but digest carefully the meat.

Soon enough you will have your bad to the bone, awesome, honk chomping, Skywagon, with all its bells and whistles, but you will have missed life in the trenches, and will never truly appreciate what the 185 means, and further more, even with all it has to offer, you will need to make a withdrawal on that experience you banked, somewhere, sometime.

I wouldn't trade places with you, but I'm so looking forward to having the Cessna 182C project flyable this year!

25hrs TW will drastically decrease insurance on your 185 and will assist in keeping your $150k plane out of the ditch.

50hrs xc is mandatory for IFR and you don't want to have to fool with building xc time while you're doing your ifr dual.

Between those and actually learning to fly (aka, renting a cheap 150/172 and flying it enough that you run into all the little difficult situations that never happened to come up during training), I'd say you have a full plate. You will save thousands by doing ifr training in a rental 172 I bet... and that's not a rating where your learning the plane anyway- you're learning the system. Those savings will pay to fly your 185 like you want to.

Hmmm, preparing to fly a high performance taildragger. I know, how bout some IFR training [emoji28]

Seriously, PPL was training to pass a checkride; the fundamentals of flying are next if you wanna work your way up n keep grandpas plane in one piece...you asked, more than happy to bust your balls in the pursuit of trying to help out [emoji1303]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You seem to have a lot of extra cash judging by the scope of your 185 project. If I were you I'd take some of that cash and buy a cheap Cessna 120/140, or other small 2 place, I'm just partial to the 120/140. You can get a decent flyer for 15-20k. Fly the crap out of it and build your experience and confidence. You can rack up a lot of tailwheel time burning less than 5gph. That experience will serve you well when you're ready to transition to the 185. Then if you want you can sell the little taildragger for close to what you paid for it.

Got a couple of tailwheel schools and instructors lined up. Going to play with that a little bit when the runway reopens and the weather clears up.

pilotryan wrote:What I do mean is that I feelt like I wasn't learning anything or trying to be a better pilot.

So, go learn something and try to be a better pilot. One of the very first things I did after my PPL checkride was to get checked out in a 182 and do a full mountain flying course - at the same time. I had decent 182 time before that in my dad's (unofficially, but experience-wise it counts) so the plane checkout was minor, but spending 4 hours flying up canyons and trying to land in winds at or exceeding the max crosswind component of the plane taught me some things. You may have a hard time finding those in MN or TX, but come out to CO - I can recommend some good instructors and courses. That also gets you a high performance endorsement out of the deal.

Lately I have started my TW endorsement in a Citabria. One day I would love a 180 or 185, but after a couple lessons in this thing with 12-18kt winds, I can tell you I am a long way from being able to handle that with my kids in the back. Literally one second of inattention flying a TW on a windy day will stain your shorts best case; my CFI had to grab the controls a couple times to save us from the weeds while I decided to re-trim for the takeoff on touch and go's - that's all it takes. Flying a TW is humbling, frustrating, exhilarating, and something I definitely advocate learning in a cheaper/lighter airplane after trying it myself. I will say though, my x-wind landing technique in tricycle gear has improved already! I thought I was halfway decent until I tried the same bullshit in a TW and got my ego handed to me, then realized how much of the aircraft's forgiveness I was leaning on.

I'll start work on my instrument rating in the mean time. The worst thing I could do is to completely stop flying until the 185 is finished and get my tailwheel and high performance endorsements in my airplane. My goal for that airplane is to not crash/loop/break it and not refining my skills brings the risk factor up just a lil bit.

Again, I'd suggest finding more of a TW trainer to get your endorsement in, and rack up 20-25 hours in that. You'll have a lot to handle just discovering that 185 to begin with, don't add in learning to keep an unstable system pointed in a very straight line on top of that. Flying a TW is like arguing with a toddler - you may think you're in control, but really they're just trying to wear you down until they can throw dinner in your face and stomp off yelling. It's a battle of willpower, and the airplane definitely has the upper hand.

You might also look around for access to a reasonably-priced 182 or constant-speed 172 (172RG adds complex to that). You can do your IR in one of those and get the rating/endorsements that way.

After I got my PPL I decided to land every public use strip in Montana something like 130. That was the best decision ever. Fly 200 miles to check off a strip and the cross wind is big, guess what, I'm not coming back better make it happen. Got lots of cross country time in the process. Learned a lot about the state. Don't hardly need a GPS anymore. Met lots of people. Learned to fly in the mountains. Learned more about weather. Learned how to hand prop. It is one thing to fly around the patch but things come up more when you leave your comfort zone.

Coyote wrote:After I got my PPL I decided to land every public use strip in Montana something like 130. That was the best decision ever. Fly 200 miles to check off a strip and the cross wind is big, guess what, I'm not coming back better make it happen. Got lots of cross country time in the process. Learned a lot about the state. Don't hardly need a GPS anymore. Met lots of people. Learned to fly in the mountains. Learned more about weather. Learned how to hand prop. It is one thing to fly around the patch but things come up more when you leave your comfort zone.

That's great advice.

A lot of great advice here.

One thing that I have learned in my 4 years/500ish hours is that the learning never ends. Be humble and stay prepared to have your ass handed to you. The minute you don't is when you will. Hopefully, nothing gets bent when it happens.

The real learning happens out away from where everything feels comfortable. This is the best type of learning for me, personally. While comfortable is relatively safe, it breeds complacency. I vote for doing anything that will broaden your experience. But specific to your situation? Go get some tailwheel time however you need to do it. Once you have a bit under your belt you will be able to gauge your comfort level and your instructor can provide you with his/her opinion as to what the next step should be.

I know that even after 250 hours of tailwheel time I was still scared shitless (but pumped!) to get behind the controls of a 180, because of the stigma around it. Being scared kept my senses alert and my feet alive on the rudder pedals. I can say there isn't much that's more satisfying than taking off and landing a big, hard pulling, high performance tailwheel airplane. FACT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WocrKw5BO7Y

crzyivan13,

Great post, advice, and video. That thing really leaps off the ground.

Ryan, do what he did. I.E., learn to land a skywagon like a boss!

I want to repeat a paragraph which I said earlier, with different emphasis:

"Congrats on earning your license to learn! There is so much more out there, for you yet to learn. As I like to say, we are all students, just at different levels of training and experience."

Those aren't just words. I've been flying for more than 44 years, but only between 2500-2600 hours total because of a number of gaps here and there. But there are guys on this forum who can outfly me any day of the week, some with more hours, some with fewer, but they all ascribe to the idea that a good pilot doesn't stop learning. It is not possible to know everything there is to know about aviation, because we operate in a constantly changing environment which poses constantly changing challenges.

There have been some great ideas for you to consider in this thread. I urge you to do some of them. Especially the idea of becoming a competent tailwheel pilot in someone else's airplane, one that is less challenging than a 185, has considerable merit, under the "crawl before you walk before you run" theory of growing your skills. But whatever you decide to do, recognize that every flight is a lesson, if you let it be. Spend a few minutes at the end of each flight, analyzing what you did right and what you did wrong--and if you're honest with yourself, the list of things you did wrong will be amazingly long, no matter how well the flight went.

Cary

Ryan,

I was planning to finish my training in my 182 after the PPonk was installed but I've since been counselled that a lot of training (repetitive circuits particularly) just isn't great for the big 6 cylinder engines. I'm finishing on one of the school 172s.

If you can find another tail wheel plane to get some hours under your belt, I bet your plane will thank you.

Allan

There is some great advice in here. I have a plane booked for latter this week so I can get back into the air and start the learning process all over again but this time at my pace doing what I want to do.

Ryan,
The last thing you want to do in ding Harry's airplane.

I think all the suggestions have merit but in my humble opinion you need to focus on learning to fly a tailwheel comfortably.
It would be prudent to get as many hours as you and your flight instructor feel comfortable in a trainer tailwheel aircraft.
Cub, Supercub, Citrabria whatever as it will be much easier to get up to speed and be considerably less expensive in many ways.
You need to get VERY comfortable flying a tailwheel in windy days with and without a crosswind before you consider flying the 185. One thing that takes a bit of time to get used to is when a X-wind gust hits you on T/O or Landing is to put more stick or wheel into the way you are headed as opposed the other direction which is the natural tendency. Using a hard surface runway is less forgiving and will make you a better pilot.

Just my thoughts,
Tom

And now for the frosting on the cake!
When I picked up grandpa's Cessna 185 a free unfinished RV-3 kit came with it and that included a yellow tagged O-320.

Would you guys sell to recover some of the costs on the 185 project or would you build it in your free time?



Also, if the weather continues being this ok here, tail-wheel training is scheduled for next week.

Sell it and buy a Champ or Cub you can fly the heck out of for awhile.

CFOT wrote:Sell it and buy a Champ or Cub you can fly the heck out of for awhile.

+1

Something you can fly RIGHT NOW. Put 500hrs on it then sell it if you want.

The RV-3's don't seem to bring a lot of money, even in flying condition, but I totally agree with the advice given. Sell it and get a cheap TW trainer. I would think you can get enough out of the RV-3 to get something that you can build time in. The T-carts and Aeronca Chief can probably be picked up for the least amount of funds. Not that it makes a huge difference but they have a yolk vs. stick. The Cessna is a yolk also and it may help a tiny bit to learn with one. I fly both and really don't see much difference when you get used to both. I do prefer the stick, but that is only because I can fulfill my inner Walter Mitty with one.

Another thing to realize, building a kit is a HUGE undertaking, especially when you are trying to get training and other things done in your young life.

OK - pet peeve time... Eggs have "yolks". Airplanes have "yokes".

And while we're at it, airplanes also have "brakes", not "breaks" – although you can certainly "break" them if you use the "brakes" wrong.

There! I feel MUCH better now. I'm going to go take my meds...

Back to your regularly scheduled discussions. (Just a little fun, guys!)