Two Pilots & an LSW: Yee Haw

I slept like crap last night. No good reason, but my brain was full on engaged, nothing bad, just ON. I felt like I was awake all night. Finally got up at 8 and just took my time getting ready and trying to get in the groove.

I went out to the airport around lunchtime, got Steak-n-Shake for a few of us, and then met with Tim K, who went over the information on his Texas Taildragger C-150 that he wanted me to do a tailwheel endorsement in with one of his employees. I'd told him I wanted to take it up myself, first. Twas a good thing.

I had an adventure today, got to play test pilot.

So, a little 1967 C-150 Texas Taildragger, bright neon green and black. When he came over to me, he brought me the logbooks and the keys and sat down and told me he wanted to give me the full story on it. It's quite a story. The plane was bought in 2011 by a guy who took the wings off, shipped it to his place in Ohio, put the wings back on himself, and flew it for a few years. He was neither a pilot nor a mechanic. No certificates/ratings. The plane never got an annual. The only maintenance done was whatever he did himself. Sales guy bought it for a song of course, as there are almost no logbooks, it had sat for a decade, etc., and put it through an annual at a nearby shop. It came out of the shop with things like new interior, new seat belts, some new hoses and wiring, tailwheel rebuilt (that's important later), and the usual paperwork that says all ADs were complied with, etc. The plane had flown a little over an hour in over 11 years, including the time it took to get to the annual shop and the time it took to get to Kokomo.

So a good preflight on my end shows a few things. It had hail damage on the control surfaces and top of the wings, okay. It was a STOL version, with the droop wingtips, and one of the wingtips was attached funny, but securely. It was placarded "Intentional Spins Prohibited" which seemed like an excellent idea to me. The tailwheel chains were long, no safety wire where normally there would be, was secure, but you could take the rudder to the stop and it wouldn't break out the tailwheel. The main gear was the steel spring gear with kind of narrow gear with larger 'tundra' tires on it, and when you pull the wing up and down, that thing rocked quite far. You could also hear and see the skin dimple and dent in when you did that, as the fuel sloshed around in there. Steve was a little less happy about that. And I'm pretty sure the antennas on it were installed backwards. I've never seen them pointing this way before. But I can't swear to that 100%. It had a nice looking paint job over all that, albeit vivid, but it definitely has some issues. "Fresh out of annual" in January, hasn't flown since. My least favorite kind of airplane to fly--one that has sat, never mind the rest.

But he was up front with me on the history of it, and I agreed to take it up, and I decided I'd just fly it over the field at 3000' for awhile. Ground run-up was good, engine sounded good, couldn't hardly break the tailwheel out, even with a fair amount of power and brake, but there are worse things. It flew fine. I could even trim it up and it flew straight and level hands off, which was nice and I half did not expect. I pulled it into an imminent stall and it stayed straight, which is better than half the 150s out there. lol The radio mostly didn't work. I could kind of hear if I pulled the squelch all the way out, people in the pattern right next to me only, but they couldn't hear any of my transmissions.

Then came the landing. I used full flaps and did a slow 3-point landing, touched down, and all hell broke loose. The tailwheel shimmied so violently it was breaking loose. NOW it was breaking loose. With the steel spring gear and the wallowy tires, and that, it was not easily controllable, and I took up 1/2 the width of the runway keeping it straight until I could get the shimmy stopped, which was about at a full stop. I taxied off, considered for a moment, then decided to try something else, and to make sure it wasn't me. Second landing as slow as possible, kept the tailwheel light, and it was a little better, but still rather violent shimmy, enough that I knew it wasn't just a technique thing easily worked around, and that much more of that and something was going to snap. So I parked it. Had to get help to push it back into the hangar because I couldn't get the tailwheel to break loose and turn around by myself.

And that was my adventure with the Frankenstein Texas Taildragger today. I sent him an email with a list of what worked well and what did not work, and let him know I bet whoever delivered that plane to him had an interesting landing, and that I wasn't doing his guy's tailwheel endorsement in that, nor should anybody really fly it at all until they fix the tailwheel (which was just rebuilt, apparently not knowledgeably, at annual). So anyway, that was interesting.

Next up I went with Cameron in the Citabria, and put him in the back and had him do an hour's worth of takeoffs and landings from the back, getting ready for him to be a tailwheel instructor. He did a nice job with it, especially as his first time back there. Next up, some crosswind to deal with on it. :)

When I left the airport, I ran home to change shirts so I wouldn't be sweaty airplane acting when I went to my school board meeting. The Christian School I'm on the board of is moving to a new facility in town, with a lot more space, and some very nice people, and tonight was my first time meeting them. So that went well, the school is doing pretty well financially, and I got home around 8 pm to end the day. Do paperwork, logbook, photos, and shoot off some emails about trips later this week. Fueling up the 340 for Wed at 5:45 am, talking to Andy about his trip to TN and the forecasted storms we've got, yadda yadda yadda.

Onward.

View under the green wing

The panel. Hands and feet off, it flew straight, even though the ball was off to the right, it didn't fly like it was actually uncoordinated. It flew true.