Familiarization and basic flight

At nine in the morning the ramp at Salinas is still cool and the sock hangs slack against its pole, and the Luscombe sits with its tail on the ground and its nose in the air, looking over your head at something you cannot see. You will spend most of today at walking pace. You already know how to fly an airplane and none of that is in question here, but the airplane you are about to taxi carries its mass behind the wheels it turns on, and mass behind the wheels means that every small wander it makes is a wander it would like to continue. Your feet have a job now. They always did. Today they find out.

Bring:

• Your logbook, pilot certificate, and medical certificate or BasicMed documentation.
• For the in-person TSA citizenship check: a valid U.S. passport, or your original birth certificate together with a government photo ID.
• Your completed Tailwheel and Luscombe Club Pilot Intake, including your weight.

Read:

• FAA-H-8083-3C, Airplane Flying Handbook, chapter 13, Transition to Tailwheel Airplanes. The chapter, not a summary of it.
• 14 CFR 61.31(i). It is four sentences and it is the whole legal basis for this course.
• PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md, the phase and lesson tables.

Know before you arrive: your own weight, honestly. N1302B carries 463 lb of useful load. Full fuel is 180 lb of that, which leaves 283 lb for both people in the airplane and anything they bring. That is why nearly every lesson launches with partial fuel, and it is why we ask.

You have completed this lesson when you can do all of the following. These are the words your instructor is grading against.

1. You preflight N1302B unprompted, and you name what you are looking for at the tailwheel and main gear rather than only looking at them.
2. You compute a weight and balance for the flight using your actual weight, and you state the fuel load it allows and why.
3. You taxi the length of the ramp and back holding the centreline, using rudder for direction and brakes only where a brake is the correct tool.
4. You position the flight controls correctly for the wind and change them as you turn, unprompted, on at least three consecutive turns.
5. You S-turn to clear the path ahead without being reminded.
6. You state, in your own words, why the airplane wants to swap ends, referring to the centre of gravity and the main wheels.
7. You name the four causes of yaw on takeoff and say which one you felt as the tail came up.
8. You execute the transfer of control procedure correctly, in both directions, every time it happens.

Standard 3 carries the lesson. Everything in Phase 2 is built on your feet already working. A pilot who can recite ground loop dynamics perfectly and still taxis with the brakes has not completed this lesson.

• Steering with the brakes. Nearly everyone does this at first, because it works. It works until the day it starts a ground loop instead of stopping one.
• Forgetting the controls after the first turn. Pilots get the wind correction right on the first taxi turn and leave the stick where it was for the next four.
• Looking at the nose instead of past it. You cannot see past it. Look down the side.
• Waiting for the airplane to yaw before pushing. By the time you have seen it you are correcting rather than preventing, and those are different habits. Yours was built in an airplane that forgave the difference.
• Going quiet during the airwork. You are a competent pilot doing familiar maneuvers in an unfamiliar airplane. Say what you notice. That is the lesson.
• Reading the demonstrated landing as easy. It looked easy because it is Lesson 1 and I chose the conditions.

I will say "my airplane," and I will take it, without discussion, if:

• The airplane begins to diverge in yaw on the ground beyond what your correction is arresting.
• We drift laterally at touchdown.
• A taxi speed develops that I am not willing to have a directional problem at.
• Anything happens that I want the controls for. I will explain afterwards, not during.

You will hear "my airplane" more in this course than you are used to. It is not a comment on you. In this airplane the window between correctable and not is short, and I would rather take it early and hand it straight back.

VS-1-1

Type: Hazard | Element: Ground loop consequence | Status: empty What it should show: a Cub ground loop, from outside the airplane, at a speed that reads as ordinary until it does not. Shown at the start of the lesson, before any discussion of technique. Reference Critique: not applicable for a Hazard Clip. Note: this Clip is not critiqued. The student is not asked what the pilot did wrong. It establishes what is at stake, and the discussion that follows is about the centre of gravity, not about that pilot.

VS-1-2

Type: Exemplar | Element: Preflight and gear inspection | Status: empty What it should show: a full preflight of N1302B with the landing gear, tailwheel assembly, and tailwheel steering springs and chains inspected and called out aloud. Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar Clip.

VS-1-3

Type: Exemplar | Element: Taxi, control positioning and S-turns | Status: empty What it should show: a taxi held on the centreline with rudder, control positions changing correctly through at least three turns into and out of the wind, and S-turns clearing the path ahead. Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar Clip.

VS-1-4

Type: Error | Element: Common taxi errors | Status: empty What it should show: typical early-lesson taxi errors. Braking to steer, stick left where it should be right after a turn, drifting off the centreline before the correction starts. Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is drawn from.

Not addressed to the student.

Run the Hazard Clip first, cold. Before the aerodynamics, before any reassurance. The clip does work a warning cannot, and it does it best without a preamble. Then go to the centre of gravity and let the student connect them. Explaining the mechanism first turns the clip into an illustration of a point already made, and most of the effect is lost.

Do not minimize and do not dramatize. The line that has worked: this is a demanding airplane flown safely by ordinary pilots every day, and the reason it is demanding is one fact about where the wheels are.

Budget more taxi time than feels reasonable. The temptation in Lesson 1 is to get airborne, because the student is a certificated pilot and taxiing can feel like an insult. It is not. The directional control habit is the whole course and it is cheapest to build on the ground. If the flight runs long on taxi and short on airwork, that is the correct trade.

Weight and balance is a live calculation, not a ground topic. Do it with the student, with real numbers, before the flight. A student who has personally computed that they and you and full fuel do not fit has learned something no briefing conveys.

Watch for the competent-pilot problem. Phase 1 students are frequently experienced and frequently quiet, because they are used to being good at this and are not, today, entirely good at it. Silence in the airwork is usually embarrassment rather than comprehension. Ask.

Brief transfer of control before the walk to the airplane, not at it. It is used heavily today and it needs to be automatic before it is needed.

Do not demonstrate a wheel landing today. Lesson 1 closes with a demonstrated three-point landing. Wheel landings are demonstrated in Lesson 2 and flown to standard in Lesson 3. Showing one now, before the student has seen a three-point at all, invites them to blend the two techniques, which is the specific failure Phase 2 exists to prevent.

• Ground topic 6 now points at ../standards/EMERGENCY-PROCEDURES.md, which exists and is written. That document carries its own Open items, and the best glide speed is the one that stops it being deliverable to a student.
• The airframe speeds, the weights, and the fuel capacity are sourced and live in ../AIRCRAFT.md with the document and page each was read from. Ground topic 4 is deliverable from that file. Nothing is transcribed into this document from memory.
• The engine limitations are not settled. N1302B has a Continental O-200 installed under STC, and the limits in ../AIRCRAFT.md are read from a related Light Sport handbook rather than from the STC or the engine operator's manual for the installed variant. Until those are read, teach the tachometer and the oil gauges from the markings on the airplane's own instruments, which are certificated markings and count as placards.
• Fuel consumption is sourced only as a figure for the original engine and a reference figure for the O-200. Brief it as approximate and say why.
• Hand-propping is answered and is no longer an open item. North Aero does not permit it. N1302B is started on the starter. Ground topic 6 says so, and ../standards/EMERGENCY-PROCEDURES.md carries the policy and what it means for a fire on start.
• Weight and balance. The CG range of 13.6 to 16.8 inches is real and comes from the loading worksheet, not from ../../VOICE.md, which never contained it. What is still missing is the datum. The weigh sheet gives arms without saying where they are measured from, so the range and the arms work together and neither can be used with a measurement taken on the airplane until ATC694 is pulled.