Started the day with another tailwheel lesson in a Piper Super Cub (see picture below). We practiced “3-point ladings”, where all three wheels touch the ground at the same time. Accoring to my instructor, Larry, this is the default or preferred landing technique in tail draggers. It feels a bit unnatural to me because in tricycle-wheel airplanes, I was taught to avoid landing flat, that is on all three wheels at once. Rather we land touching the two main gears (under the wings) and gently letting the nose wheel down. Landing on the two main gears in a tailwheel is called a “wheel landing” and is useful in high wind situations. Larry demonstrated one and it did feel more natural. We’ll see how this plays out as I get more practice.

Cool Picture Description

Although I haven’t received that plans or parts needed to continue construction of the Onex, I’ve been in contact with Sonex. Mark, their CEO, has assured me that they’re doing their best to get me the missing parts as soon as possible. Steven, their warehouse guy, went our his way to call the flywheel vendor and get them to make an urgent small batch and that I should have it my Monday. Yay! Steven rocks! Can’t wait.

This evening I attended my first EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) meeting at the Scottsdale chapter. Errr, Thunderbird is the term they use since Scottsdale Airport used to me a military field where WWII pilots trained. I figure I can learn a lot from this group since presumably they’ve all build airplanes before. But I observed two things. 1) I’m decades unders the average age of attendees. 2) They didn’t talk about building airplanes. There was a guest speaker, Bill Cutter, who told some amazing stories about flying and ballooning in the 40’s and 50’s. But I didn’t get what I expected out of the meeting. Perhaps I’ll try out the Deer Valley chapter next as I’ve heard they’re more builder oriented.