CHAPTER 1 / Stick & Bourbon: The Hangar Briefing You’ll Wish You Ignored

Before we dive tailwheel-first into taildragger ops—mainly how to survive taxi, takeoff, and landing without embarrassment or an insurance claim—let’s detour into the septic tank of pilot mythology.

Because before you learn how to operate a taildragger, you’ll need to survive the bar.

Where stall theories, lift lies, and rudder fairy tales go to breed.

Let’s burn the bullshit first.

SETTING:

A dimly lit pilot bar with peeling aviation stickers, a propeller on the wall that definitely hit something once, and a jukebox that only plays Danger Zone or silence. The kind of place where dreams come to stall, spin, and smack the ground in a fireball of ego and expired logbooks.
A crusty Cessna yoke sits nailed above the bar, and the air smells of jet fuel, bar nuts, and delusion. Everyone in here is either halfway to an FAA violation—or proud of one.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

NICK
“The Sunshine Warrior”
Has flown a Cessna 172 for twenty years—accumulating 504.5 total hours, all in VFR, all in Southern California, all in air that’s been fully dehumidified by God himself.
Avoids clouds like they’re Russian spyware.
Crosswind limit: 3 knots, if accompanied by a priest.
Considers leaning the mixture "aggressive maintenance."
Thinks rudder pedals are decorative.
Believes taildraggers are “what they used in the war before we figured out tricycles.”

Favourite manoeuvre: Canceling flights.
Favourite phrase: “I prefer to wait for perfect conditions.”

DICK
“The Legend in His Own Logbook”
Once flew a Piper PA-28 until his FAA medical was revoked for confusing runways with commercial parking lots.
Has landed on the 405 freeway—twice.
Legally blind, functionally deaf, but spiritually invincible.
Still wears his captain's cap.
Quotes ancient FARs from memory—none of them current.
Keeps a laminated newspaper clipping of his highway landing like it’s a Medal of Honour.
Hasn't touched a yoke since Y2K, but swears he "could still grease a landing if the tower would just shut up."

Favourite manoeuvre: Unintended touch-and-go on Interstate asphalt.
Favourite phrase: “Back in my day…”

RICK
“The Conventional Gear Messiah (Self-Appointed)”
Flies a Super Cub like it owes him money.
Has ground-looped into a tree, nosed over twice, and blames gravity for all of it.
Hero-worships Loni Howitzer and once tried to copy a tail-up run-up—drove his propeller into the apron like a lawn dart.
Still lectures younger pilots about "stick-and-rudder discipline" while his Cub leaks oil onto the bar parking lot.
Claims tricycle gear is for “pilots with unresolved childhood trauma.”
Describes himself as “half bush pilot, half misunderstood genius, all man.”

Favourite manoeuvre: Botched wheel landings disguised as "agricultural exploration."
Favourite phrase: “If you ain’t a taildragger pilot, you ain’t sh*t.”

Narrator (Me):
Silently watching from a nearby table. Nursing a whiskey, a student pilot logbook with entries written in blood, and a deep sense that these three idiots are somehow the perfect metaphor for everything that went wrong with your aviation journey—and possibly your life.

It’s late. The bar smells like wet carpet, Avgas, and the unwashed fleece of retired CFI royalty.
Nick and Dick are hunched over twin pints of Guinness like monks in mourning.
A framed poster of the Wright brothers hangs crooked on the wall, someone’s drawn a penis on Orville’s head.

Then the door slams open.

Rick storms in—flailing his arms like a motivational speaker at a manifestation seminar for under-medicated yoga moms.

“Guys!” he beams, eyes wild, voice louder than a CFI’s trauma.
“You will not believe what I just did!”

Nick doesn’t even look up.

“You’re right, Rick,” he mutters. “We won’t.”

Dick adjusts his hearing aid, nods slowly like a man who’s already landed on the wrong runway in life—and twice on the wrong highway.

Rick slams his beer down, practically levitating with testosterone.

“Hammerhead. Full-blown. Perfect vertical pull, stall turn, rudder over—BAM—came down like a missile. Textbook!”

I blink.

Hammerhead.
In a Super Cub.
Which cruises at 90 if it's in a good mood and someone’s removed the passenger seat for weight reduction.

“How did you even hit 120 knots for entry?” I ask, already regretting the words.
“Downhill,” he says without hesitation. “Gravity assist. I call it terrain leveraging.”

I grip my glass tighter and resist the urge to jam a bar straw into my ear canal.

Myth #1: What’s the Rudder For?

Rick’s on a roll now. He starts gesturing like he’s narrating an airshow.

“I kicked the rudder over real hard—steered that baby right around.”

Nick’s head snaps around.

“Wait, rudder? You mean for steering?”

“Of course,” Rick says, like he’s explaining gravity to children. “It’s the foot-wheel.”

And that’s the moment.

The precise, bone-chilling moment when my soul tries to leave my body and file for early retirement.
Because somewhere, deep in the ghostly halls of aviation heaven, a Beechcraft rudder pedal just shuddered in grief.

“Wrong,” I say. “Wrong like landing gear up.
The rudder’s job is not to steer like some ground-bound golf cart. It’s to counteract adverse yaw—the unholy side-effect of applying aileron.
You bank? You yaw. You yaw? You correct—with rudder. That’s coordination. Not ‘steering.’ Not ‘left pedal makes plane go left.’ This isn’t Mario Kart, Rick.”

Rick shrugs.

“Works for me.”

MYTH #2: Tricycle Gear Is ‘Better’

Nick chimes in, sensing safety in numbers.

“I started on nose wheel,” he says, cautiously. “Much easier. Taildraggers are just… outdated.”

“So are books,” I reply, “but they still contain information.”

Dick clears his throat—the kind of theatrical throat-clear that suggests wisdom but usually precedes disaster.
“Back in my day, we didn’t need rudder. The plane just felt right.”

This is the same man who once mistook a Walmart loading dock for runway 29 and landed between two shopping carts with the grace of a dropped fridge.

Rick’s still glowing from his imaginary hammerhead.
Dick is now staring at the exit sign, possibly confusing it for an ILS approach light.
Nick nurses his Guinness like it contains the FAA written answers he never bothered to read.

That’s when I twist the knife.

“You landed on the freeway.”

Dick blinks. “Twice.”

“Exactly.”

Here’s the reality:

Tricycle gear puts the center of gravity in front of the mains.
Which means: you screw up, it self-corrects.

Taildraggers put the CG behind the mains.
You screw up? The plane accelerates the error like gossip at a flying club barbecue.

That’s not worse.
That’s not “old-fashioned.”
That’s honest.

MYTH #3: Why Does a Plane Fly?

(Spoiler: It’s not because God was distracted or Bernoulli had a soft spot for slow learners.)

“Rick,” I ask, carefully, like defusing a bomb made of ignorance,
“Why does a plane fly?”

He doesn’t blink.
“Bernoulli’s Principle. Or maybe Canolli’s Law. Something about faster air over the top. Like a Venturi, right? It’s science, man.”

“No, Rick. That’s marketing material for flight schools that think Newton was a type of apple.”

I set my drink down. Draw a wing in the air like I’m explaining sorcery to medieval peasants.

“The wing flies because it punches air down. Hard.
You shove enough atmosphere downwards? You go up.
That’s Newton.
Not the guy with the YouTube channel. The one with the apple.
First name: Isaac.
Didn’t work for Cessna. Didn’t write brochures.”

Nick frowns.
“So… Bernoulli’s not wrong?”

“He’s incomplete,” I say. “Like your crosswind technique.”

Nick tries again.
“But what about the camber, pressure differential, low pressure zone—?”

“Nick.
If Bernoulli was the whole story, planes couldn’t fly upside down.
But they do. You know why?

Because angle of attack is king.
The wing is a flying shovel. Pitch it right, and it slams air down so you can pretend you're a god.
Pitch it wrong, and gravity schedules a meeting.
No warning. No coffee. Just the ground, fast.”

Dick chuckles into his beer.
“I always just pulled the yoke and hoped.”

MYTH #4: A Stall Happens Only When You’re Slow

Rick leans back, looking pleased with himself.
“Stalls happen when you get too slow,” he says, like he just uncovered aviation’s Rosetta Stone.
Dick nods. Nick mutters something about flaps.

And that’s when I consider setting fire to the placemat.

“No,” I say. “Stalls happen when your angle of attack exceeds critical. That’s it. That’s the rule.”

I look around.

“You can stall at 40 knots in a climb, or at 400 knots in a dive.
Ask the ghost of Air France 447—they were high, fast, and confused.
The speed didn’t matter. The angle did.
They pulled. The wing said no.
Then the ocean said yes.”

Rick looks doubtful. “But isn’t slow flight where it happens?”

“It’s where it starts for most student pilots.
Because they’re gently bumbling around at 1.1 Vso, waiting for the buffet and thinking the stall horn is some divine warning system.
But high-speed stalls?
Those are the ones that don’t knock.
They just punch you in the mouth and leave a crater.”

Dick blinks slowly. “I thought faster was safer.”

“Faster just means you hit harder.”

They all stare at me.

Three men.
Three styles of misbelief.
One Cessna cultist, one retired highway bandit, and one taildragger evangelist who thinks ground loops are a personality trait.

I drain my drink.
Consider ordering another.
Consider a career in mushroom farming.
Or silence.
But instead, I sigh and open my notebook.

“Maybe this book needs to exist after all…”