MrMorden wrote:Warmi wrote:TimTaylor wrote:I would prefer the tail dragger. Once you have plenty of experience in one, you understand the benefits.
Well, there are hardly any - if there were, every commercial aviation customer that actually uses their equipment for work , as opposed to fun, would be ordering them ..
There are benefits, I listed them and you just shrugged them off as not really benefits. In my circle of pilots I'm literally the *only* one flying tricycle, everybody else is flying a taildragger. We fly to a lot of grass strips, and I can only land at about 80% of the ones we like to go to, because I have a nosewheel. They can fit better tires for rougher surfaces, and have prop clearance on tall grass and to avoid debris going through the prop arc.
Nosewheel airplanes have one advantage: they are easier to land. That's all. That doesn't make them better, just easier.
None of these are benefits specific to taildraggers. Just because your Flight Design was not designed for off road type of flying , it doesn’t mean you could not do that in a properly equipped tricycle. A Zenith 750 with large bush tires can land just as short and go everywhere a taildragger can go - I have seen countless videos of people doing just that.
And yes , being able to land a plane with less effort and safer is a huge advantage given that majority of accidents are related to landing - while at the same time being able to do just about everything else a taildraggers can do - it is not just my opinion but a fact reflected by insurance rates as well as commercial operators moving away from taildraggers to tricycles for just about every commercial application.
It is almost like discussing religion - people just seem incapable of admitting that “ yeah , taildraggers are outdated and offer no tangible benefits while being harder to land, harder to insure but they are fun and that’s why I fly them”- no , they have to invent all sorts of benefits , justifications, stuff like “ it will make you a better pilot “ , “ you will only understand the benefits if you fly them ...”, “ real pilots only fly taildraggers “ - etc etc