CHAPTER 27 / CROSSWIND TAKEOFF, PART 2: THE WIND STRIKES BACK or: ONE WHEEL TO RULE THEM ALL

Alright, Goose. Strap in and cinch that harness like it owes you child support and a handwritten apology. This isn’t a 5-knot tickle to your ego while soccer moms film you from the lawn in portrait mode. This isn’t the kind of wind you log “for currency.” This is the kind of wind that made God shrug, mutter “I’ve had it with this idiot,”—and walk away, handing your case file to Satan’s air traffic control intern. This is where your Guardian Angel dipped out for a cigarette and got reassigned to a Cirrus owner with parachute privilege and Bluetooth weather. This is Lucifer’s left armpit, stirred by Beelzebub with a prop strike, and now roaring across your wingtip at 20 knots, gusting 35 — and climbing.

You taxi to the threshold.
The birds aren’t flying.
They’re not even pretending.
They’re huddled on the apron, checking their group insurance policy and waiting for the airport shuttle to evacuate them before your stupidity goes airborne.

And here’s the hard part:
If you want to survive this takeoff — you’re gonna have to get filthy.
Not just “a little aggressive.”
Not “tail-low and mindful.”

I mean unholy, trench-warfare filthy.
This isn’t a PowerPoint manoeuvre.
This isn’t some lukewarm WhatsApp thread about wind correction.
This is not a technique.
This is a knife fight with Newton on a sloped gravel runway.

There is no room for elegance.
There is only raw, manual savagery —the kind that makes flight examiners weep backward and start drinking again.

This isn’t about “technique” anymore.
This is about combat.
You versus the elements.
Torque versus regret.
Tailwheel versus tombstone.

This is not a honeymoon scenario.
This is the Hindukusch at 50 feet AGL.
This is an ambush set by crosswind, disguised as “a good learning day.”
This is where you earn the tailwheel endorsement tattooed into your spinal memory.

ONE WHEEL TO RULE THEM ALL

Or: How to Date Wind With One Tire and No Regrets

Let’s rewind.
Rewind so hard the FAA flinches.

As previously screamed in this manual of emotional damage, you must become intimate with one-wheel taxi technique.
Left. Right. Switch. Repeat.
Do it until your tires start whispering to the wind and you can feel gust shifts in your fillings.

If you can’t roll on one wheel, you don’t belong in a taildragger.
Because if you think a taildragger is just another plane with more fabric—
You’re not a pilot.
You’re an underpaid Hollywood extra in a post-apocalyptic Indiana Jones sequel filmed in Nigeria with zero aviation insurance and a goat on payroll as your safety coordinator.

Get out of the cockpit.
Buy a Cessna.
Join the witness protection program for failed tailwheel pilots and fly forever in straight lines, corrected gently by a nose-wheels with  daddy issues.

Ok, before you start sweating like a priest in a brothel during tax season, let’s get to the core question:

How the hell do you actually train this one-wheel voodoo?

If you’re lucky — like I was —you’ll run into some hillbilly CFI named Bill who smells like avgas, unresolved PTSD, and victory.
The kind of man with the manic glare of a Navy SEAL, a gambling problem, and a head injury sustained somewhere between a bar fight and a Citabria checkout.

He didn’t teach me—he showed me.
By blasting down the runway on one wheel, so low the opposite wingtip could have scratched chewing gum off the asphalt and picked up spare change.

But here’s the bad news:
At the end of the day, you have to do the work.
And no, watching YouTube does not count unless it ends with someone crying and bent aluminium.

THE METHOD: RIGHT WHEEL RITUAL

Let’s walk through it like an aviation exorcism:

1. Pick a day with no wind.
   Wind is for later. You don’t need to be outwitted by God and geometry on your first try.
2. Choose a wide, long grass strip.
   Grass forgives.
   Asphalt punishes.
   Grass lets you slip sideways and whispers, “It’s okay, everyone’s scared.”
3. Line up with the centreline.
   Or just imagine one.
   Because if you’re flying a Cub, chances are your runway is held together by grass, optimism, and cow poop.
4. Throttle up.
   Build speed until the tail rises — don’t yank it up like you’re pumping water from a well in 1912.
   Just let it come up, smooth and guilty.
5. Apply right stick.
   Think “turning toward McDonald’s at midnight,” not “emergency turn toward the ambulance.”
   You’ll feel the left wing rise, and that wheel lift off like it’s had enough of your BS.
6. Now… left rudder. Gently.
   Not with the force you’d use to kick a snake.
   Just enough to counteract the aircraft’s sudden interest in turning.
   That’s it.
   You’re now slipping sideways down the runway… on one wheel.
   Ground-based side slip.
   You’re almost flying.
   Emotionally, spiritually, mechanically — you’re doing a thing no Airbus has ever dared.
7. From here, your two options:
   • Throttle up, commit to launch, and take off like you're late for court.
   • Throttle back, relax stick and rudder, let the left wheel settle gently… then the tail.
     You’ve just landed without landing.
     Congratulations, psycho.

Do this 10 times per side.
And I mean do it, not just fantasise about it while eating pistachios in the hangar.

Once you’ve got it down —
once the wheels, wings, and rudder feel like extensions of your survival instinct —
then you are cleared to proceed to light crosswind operations.

Until then?
Stay off the paved runways.
Stay off Instagram.
And for the love of all holy torque forces, stay away from YouTube comment sections.