I like round engines. I like flying behind them, and I like working on them.
How much conventional gear experience do I have? How much do I need?
I didn't state anything smug, opinionated, or even debatable. I take strong exception to the stupidity of the statement that there are those who have, and those who will. This presupposes the inevitable. It casts airmanship to the wind, relegates it to fate. Those who believe such nonsense have no business in a cockpit, period. If one believes it is inevitable, then die in a rockingchair and save the passengers the grief of an inevitable fate.
A ground loop is NOT inevitable. A gear up landing is not inevitable. Certainly they happen, but both are far from inevitable. Have I groundlooped? As a kid, I got a bootheel stuck under the rudder pedal bar on a cub while stabbing at the heel brake while taxiing, and endured the embarassment of having bystanders watch as I rode in a slow circle on the taxiway, trying to get it free. I stopped, removed the boots, and tossed them out, and never wore them again. I never had that problem again, either.
That was a long time ago, I was seventeen. Since that time, I've flown conventional gear off sand and dirt, grass and ice, tarmac and everything else from roads to brush to whatever else was required, from small light fabric piston airplanes to larger heavy turbine airplanes...each with the common characteristic of having the third wheel where God intended it; in back. I've flown those airplanes under powerlines and into tight canyons, under hard core VFR, and zippo visibility VFR and IFR. I've flown them into places that you probably wouldn't dream of going in your nightmares, on a daily basis, in winds that are probably higher than anything you've ever experienced outside the jet stream. No groundloops since.
That's not owing to great wisdom, skill, or intelligence. I'm an average pilot, perhaps a little below average. No great insight, no rocket science. It's simply a matter of flying the airplane as it should be flown, learning from experience, and taking the proactive stance that there is no fate, only circumstance with which I have an active part in creation. I've had the gear failures, brake failures, fires, and the usual. Some have worked out well, some not so well. I'll take an airplane in high winds, and fly it in rough terrain, and make the best of the circumstances given; it's part of what I do. Just like thousands of others.
I fly conservatively. I don't burn off the bottom half of the tank where able. I don't study systems, I digest airplanes, because it's kept me alive, and it's worked so far. I refuse flights where judgement dictates, and I set my own minimums usually in excess of the minimums required by law. I don't push limits; mine, or those of the airplane. I go around. I maintain blindfold familiarity with each cockpit I fly, because experience has taught me that my life depends on that fact. I live by the credo that there is no flight which must be made, no matter how seemingly critical it may be. I live on the memory of too many dead friends and co-workers, and acquaintances who have left me a lesson in legacy of their bitter loss; better to listen to their dying act as a sermon than repeat it in ignorance. And I pass on those lessons where I can.
If you don't like it, you don't need to take it. You can believe the criminal falsehood of inevitability, and let your own fate rest in the nonexistant hand of fortune. Only a fool would do so, but for those who believe otherwise, why fight what one cannot control? Take your place as a statistic; I'll add the lesson etched in your blood to the others in memory; however faint, some good may come of it. If not, if you perchance do choose to believe that you have some control, that the outcome of every landing and everyflight is indeed in your hands, then welcome back to reality, and let's forget this nonsense.
Do I care if you find fault with me? Not hardly. I'm slightly balding, my back is a little hunched, my eyes are too close together, my face is wrinkled and doesn't hold a shaven look for long. I'm often tired. I'm divorced. I don't work and play well with others. I have no education. My pattern work has long since degenerated to exclude the base leg; it's a downwind to final, or not at all. The list is nearly endless, your contribution to the litany is only reiteration of hum-ho fact. My judgement as an aviator is based on countless scores of monuments to stupidity, and an inexplicable drive that compels me to not repeat any one of those events more than I possibly must.
Operating a conventional gear airplane is a basic pilot skill. It is no great feat. What it does do is require that one actually sit up and pay attention, stay a foot or two ahead of the airplane, respect it. Nothing more. No great accolade flying with a tailwheel; it's nothing more than an elementary skill. If one cannot manage it, then one cannot say it is some challenge, some wall, something that is above the most basic of monkey skills, for that's all it is. To grant it any more mystic mythology is only to profess ignorance; something excusable so long as one recognizes the depth of the ignorance and acts accordingly. For one to fail to recognize it, one is placed in the position of being behind the ball; a dangerous place to be and one not served as fate. It's all in the hands of the driver.
This isn't smugness, nor conceit. It's simple fact. There is nothing inevitable about groundlooping, about gear up landings, about crashing, or any other aspect of aviation. I submit that one should be prepared for any emergency as though it is inevitable, but one should never become ensconced in the laughable admonition that there are those who have, and those who will. Such wild speculation leaves aside those who never have, and those who won't...because they won't allow it to happen.
Accidents happen. Stupdity happens. But neither is inevitable. That's not opinion, nor smug conceit. It's a fact. To even debate that is to profess self ignorance in the extreme, and that folks, is pure fact.
