Merry Christmas to all! My A&P / IA, who is also a CFI and a personal friend, gave me a surprise Christmas gift yesterday: 1/2 hour of dual in a Champ (Aeronca) 7EC.
It was... a humbling experience... In flight, I had to work hard to keep the plane pointing where I wanted, but believe it or not, the hardest challenge (excluding takeoff and landing - which I did not attempt) was to taxi the plane. I was all over the place taxiing, and barely able to control the thing. (I have left out the most embarrassing details...) I am a Sport Pilot with 220 hours, but nearly all of them are in my two control Ercoupe, in which I took primary training and my checkride. Therefore, I have two huge learning curves to contend with: (1) No significant rudder pedal experience - All my reflexes are set to work only with the yoke... (2) The whole taildragger thing. We agreed that I would need more than 10 hours of dual before even considering soloing, because I would have to learn from scratch how to use rudder pedals, which most pilots learning taildraggers already know how to do. I realize that the learning process I need to go through is rather unique (learn rudder pedals and unlearn two-control) and not a common one CFIs face when giving primary training. Any advice on how to learn rudder pedals after having the old brain hard wired to use only the yoke??? Eliacim N87071 61TE / GKY
