Nose or Tail
It seems there is a never ending discussion on whether to fly nose wheel or tail wheel. Having always trained on the stereotypical Cessna, it seems the obvious thing to fly nose wheel aircraft but then why is it that most taildragger pilots are said to be better “stick and rudder” flyers.
In the end, it comes down to personal preference or maybe the type of home airfield. While all Van’s Aircraft are perfectly capable to land on grass or gravel as well as the classical paved runways, it seems more like the natural habitat of taildraggers. On the other hand… why would you make things difficult if it can be easy?
Well that’s the whole thing… as a pilot you want to challenge yourself and be challenged to be better, to keep on top of your game and to be the best you can at flying and at greasing those wheels onto the runway and if that’s what you like then a taildragger is definitely the way to go. On the other hand… as this is new I’m ready to start to learn all over again.
Flying tailwheel isn’t all that difficult. People have done it that way for many years. They managed. They did it fine so there’s no way to assume it wouldn’t work for a nose wheel pilot. On top of that, Van’s Aircraft RV’s are known to be quite benign in their handling.
So… as you have probably already guessed… I’m going to build the tailwheel version. The RV-8.
The decision is personal and the motivations may differ for everybody. I like it. I like how it looks, I like the idea of flying taildraggers and now it’s just a matter of putting in a few thousand hours to get it built. More to follow …. 😉
