![\"20130810-202555.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/20130810-202555.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe left Zamperini Field and flew over to Compton for some landing practice.. \u00a0LOTS of landing practice. \u00a0 We did 7 landings, none of which were any good, except the first one Mickey did to demonstrate the technique. \u00a0But I did better than Mickey expected me to. \u00a0Mostly, the issues I have relate to the fact that there is no bullshitting the Citabria. \u00a0You either fly it properly or you get your ass handed to you.<\/p>\n
It has very low wing loading. \u00a0It’s super light and very responsive, a true sport plane. \u00a0 Not very fast or powerful, but it has retained a lot of things that were mostly designed out of the Cherokees I learned to fly in. \u00a0 For example, adverse yaw in this airplane is a killer. \u00a0 If you move the stick left, the nose swings right, and you need to use those lumps of meat and bone at the ends of your legs to coordinate with left rudder. \u00a0 Not only that, if you move the stick to either side in takeoff roll or landing, the nose swings and sets you up for a really gnarly ground loop. \u00a0 In the Cherokee, the ailerons are designed to counteract this a little by placing a little more drag on the down side. \u00a0 The RV is similar, but not as pronounced.<\/p>\n
And of course, there’s the tailwheel configuration itself. \u00a0On the ground, once turning, a tailwheel aircraft keeps turning, unless you stop the turn with opposite rudder, and the landing is where this is most likely to nail you. \u00a0You can stick the landing then drift off into the weeds when your mind moves the stick for you and not the pedals.<\/p>\n
There will be some unlearning of habits and some learning of new ones, but Mickey’s a great instructor and he’s been doing this forever. \u00a0 \u00a0Someday, i’ll be able to land this airplane without rolling it into a ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday afternoon, I went down to TOA to meet with Mickey Holton, an instructor recommended to me by Matt at MGL a while back. \u00a0Mickey teaches tailwheel flying, “real flying” as he calls it and I tend to agree. \u00a0 \u00a0After a briefing and a look over my logbook, we fired up the green Citabria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}