Taildragging in breezy conditions

My daughter’s boyfriends parents were visiting from Germany, so of course I volunteered to take them for a quick trip around the locale as they were only staying two days before moving on.

The only time I could get the plane that suited us all was Friday late afternoon.

Of course the weather was determined not to play ball, and although the clouds were plenty high enough and broken, the wind was pretty blustery all day – not good in a light taildragger.

But I set off to the airfield, feeling it was marginal (according to my personal guidelines that is). The wind was changing all the time, but was generally 240 / 15. Given the runway in use of 27, there was some crosswind, but it wasn’t too bad. What wasn’t good was that as showers approached, the wind would change and hit 240 / 20G30 – ouch!

So for me marginal conditions, but I had a good think and decided that nothing ventured nothing gained and that I was not going to be a ‘scaredy squirrel’.

So I briefed my passengers, with the help of their son who translated some of the trickier bits, they did speak reasonable English, but I wanted to make certain they understood completely.

So it was going to be two quick locals, one for each of the parents, before the airfield closed as I didn’t fancy landing on indemnity in such blowy conditions.

As it turned out, it was windy, but I handled it OK. The take-offs were easy enough, just very careful and quick on the pedals to keep the nose straight with into wind aileron. The first landing was a bit of a bounce, but the second landing was much better.

We dodged the showers up there and had a quick look around the locale with two mandatory flypasts of my house (which the wife saw as she was walking the dog).

A good couple of flights and I felt much better for having made the decision to fly in such breezy conditions – no sweat at all in a nosewheel aircraft, but if you haven’t flown a light taildragger in such windy conditions and wonder what all the fuss is about, then either you are a much better pilot than me (entirely possible) or you haven’t tried it in a taildragger yet – give it a go!