CHAPTER 20 / THE TAILWHEEL‑HIGH RUN‑UP

Alright, Amelia. You’ve made it to the threshold of Runway 09. Confidence foaming out of your headset like yesterdays cappuccino. You taxied here without ground‑looping into history, flattening livestock, or triggering an insurance investigation. That alone puts you in the top 30%. Your wife, seated behind you, still believes in your competence. Your dog, two feet behind her, still trusts you. That’s adorable. Both of them are wrong—but that’s not important right now.

You’re sitting there at the hold short line.
Engine idling peacefully.
Smooth. Calm. Innocent.
Like a chicken that has never heard the word soup.

And then it happens.

Your brain—already fragile from wind, torque, and a lifetime of bad ideas—replays that video. You know the one.

The EAA coverage of the 2010 Valdez STOL Competition.
Short takeoffs. Shorter landings. Big tires. Bigger confidence. Men who look like they wrestle weather systems for fun. Pilots taking off in distances normally reserved for birds. 

And there he was—Paul Claus, Alaskan demigod of bush flying, probably raised by wolves and turbulence.

You watched that clip fifty-seven times on repeat.
Not for technique.
Not for theory.
Just so your fragile man-brain could whisper:

“Look how high that tail is. I bet I could do that.”

You couldn’t…

You remember the airplanes.
You remember the pilots.
You remember the angles, the sound, the applause.

What you didn’t remember—because your ego conveniently muted it—was the single most important line of bush‑flying wisdom ever spoken on camera, the one thing Paul Claus said that really mattered:

“Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice…
You can’t expect to do what I do after just 500 hours.”

That was the moment you should have stopped the video.
Closed YouTube.
Gone for a walk.
Questioned your life choices.

But no, your ego filtered that out like a malfunctioning E6B running on Red Bull and lies.
Instead, the Iceman living rent‑free in your skull leaned in and whispered: 

“Wow. Those tailwheel‑high takeoffs look cool.”
“You’ve got a Super Cub.”
“You watched the video.”
“How hard can it be?”

No, Ice.
It’s not hard.

It’s financially catastrophic.

Because a tailwheel‑high run‑up isn’t a manoeuvre. It’s a confession.

A confession that you’re about to load full power into an airplane that is already directionally unstable, already angry, and already one gust away from court‑ordered mediation—while you remove the last thing keeping it honest: weight on the tail.

At that moment—before the throttle moves—everything you haven’t practiced shows up.

Rudder discipline. Brake restraint. Torque management. Judgment.

And if any one of those is missing?

Congratulations.

You’ve just converted a calm runway threshold into a five‑second financial burn rate that would make a startup CFO cry.

Tailwheel‑high run‑ups don’t forgive. They don’t educate. They don’t care how inspired you felt watching Valdez highlights at 1:30 a.m.

They only ask one question:

“Did you earn this… or are you about to learn it?” 

You’re about to learn it loudly, sideways, and with witnesses.

Ok, this is what YOU think happens next:

You glance smugly over your shoulder—not to check for traffic, but to smoulder seductively at your wife, who’s seated in the back, blissfully unaware she’s about to be collateral damage in a cinematic ego implosion.

Over the radio, you purr:

“Watch this, darling. I’ll show you how real bush pilots take off.”

Which, of course, is pilot code for:

“This next manoeuvre has only ever worked in my imagination and one Valdez video from 2010.”

Your wife—entranced—gets that misty, Titanic-deck-at-sunset look in her eyes.
Your dog, loyal but naïve, wags his tail in anticipation of a victory snack.
Kalli, watching from the hangar, exhales smoke slowly like a man preparing to witness an aviation holocaust.

You hold the brakes.
Throttle forward.
The engine screams.
And the tail rises—gracefully, in your mind—like a Saturn V rocket lifting off from Houston, dripping with power and destiny.

You release the brakes.
The Cub surges forward.
Not like a normal airplane, no.
Like an F-18 off a carrier deck.
You are the launch sequence.
You are the storm.
You are Maverick with a VOR fetish.

In this hallucination, the wheels barely touch the runway.
You rotate at 50 feet, wings slicing the air like Excalibur on loan from Valhalla.

Kalli, eyes squinting through the smoke, smiles approvingly.
Your instructor, watching from a distance, nods and murmurs to the mechanic:

“That’s my boy.”

The FBO crew emerges, spontaneously applauding. One wipes away a tear. A bald eagle appears on final approach, saluting you with its wings.
The American flag unfurls from the Cub’s struts. You vanish into the horizon, a legend, reborn, with tundra tires and a dream.

Too bad none of that’s real.

Because the fantasy just expired—torched by physics, ego, and a Super Cub with abandonment issues.

Let’s now unveil what actually happens.
Because your Saturn V launch sequence? It’s about to nose-over straight into Wyoming cow dung, served with a side of regret and a tailwind of public humiliation.

You’re starring in:
“Super Cub: The Wreckoning.” Rated R for rudder negligence, rotational chaos, and unsupervised decisions.

Here’s the real script:

– You step on the brakes.

– You firewall the throttle like it insulted your mother.

– The tail snaps up like a mousetrap.

– The nose yaws left.

– You panic.

– You overcorrect.

– It yaws right—violently, like it’s chasing the career it never had.

– You slam the brakes, harder.

– They laugh.

– Your propeller craters the asphalt like it’s seeking asylum from your decision-making.

SCREEEECH.
BEND.
GRIND.

Your cowling collapses like a budget airline seat back.
Your spinner explodes in existential despair.
A bolt rolls across the ramp with Shakespearean finality.

– Your dog reconsiders his loyalty and stares at the horizon like he misses his previous owner.
– Your wife? Already on Google, searching: “Pilot cremation costs + express option + don’t tell mother-in-law”

Congratulations, Iceman.
You’ve just attempted a high-power tailwheel run-up with:
– No proper tailwheel training
– No directional muscle memory
– And the stability of a stroller with broken wheels in a hurricane

You wanted a moment of cinematic glory.
You got a GoPro death spiral and a ramp crew debating whether to laugh, cry, or get the fire extinguisher.

And Kalli?
Kalli isn’t smiling.
He’s turning around.
He’s already erased your number and renamed your slot in the hangar:

“DO NOT RENT TO THIS IDIOT.”