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Squirrelly Taildraggers
There aren't many squirrelly taildraggers, but there are a lot of squirrelly pilots.
We often hear pilots say this or that model of taildragger is “squirrelly.” Some say those with narrow landing gear are squirrelly, while others say the short-coupled ones are squirrelly. Some pilots even name their taildraggers Squirrelly. The implication is that these particular taildragger models are unpredictable and prone to dart off in some new direction for no apparent reason.
Although that might be true for a particular airplane if the landing gear has been bent out of alignment, it is not generally true. While narrow gear airplanes do reach the point of no return sooner (an angle to the direction of travel from which a ground loop is not recoverable without adding power), both narrow gear airplanes and short-coupled airplanes generally behave well if the gear is properly aligned.
This is not to say that some taildraggers are not harder to control than others, but the real issue is probably rudder authority, rather than any natural tendency to wander off course. The rudder on some airplanes may simply have less authority to counteract a crosswind gust. However, as long as the airplane has effective brakes, even this can be mitigated by the differential brake steering.
Even airplanes with excellent rudder authority can get an undeserved reputation for being squirrelly. For instance, when I bought my Pitts S-1D, a couple of former Pitts pilots warned me that they can be squirrelly, and told me stories of themselves and others ground looping their Pitts. However, once I got over my initial tendency to over-control it, I found my Pitts to be a completely honest airplane. It always did exactly what I told it to do, both in the air and on the ground. It’s just that I had to be careful about what I told it to do, especially on the ground. It was so exquisitely controllable that only a very light touch was needed to make it do what I wanted. Anything more would send it immediately off in the direction I had unintentionally pointed it.
I was even cautioned by my Pitts S-2 checkout pilot never to wheel land a Pitts because “the people who wheel land them wreck them.” However, the pilot from whom I bought my S-1D said he wheel landed it all the time, so I did too, and I never had any problem.
That Pitts taught me tail-up braking to a full stop, tail-up differential brake steering, and turning off onto a taxiway before finally stopping and easing the tail down. Once I got the hang of it, the so-called squirrelly Pitts was the opposite of squirrelly. It was the most controllable airplane I had ever owned.
The stories about squirrelly taildraggers are recounted mostly by those who have not yet acquired their essential taildragger reflexes. Those who have acquired them realize that the real problem is squirrelly pilots.
This is not to denigrate squirrelly pilots. I have been one myself, more than once. We all have. However, once we have acquired (or in my case re-acquired) our essential taildragger reflexes, we are no longer squirrelly pilots, and our taildraggers are no longer squirrelly.
