November 2004

They’re called “conventional” gear aircraft, these taildraggers, and to most people they’re a throwback to the early days of flying when any reasonably flat field was a landing space.

Not that they were easy to handle once you got them on the ground—it took foresight and planning and muscle and a working knowledge of geometry and physics to maneuver a machine that steered like a fork lift and was always willing to give the inattentive a quick panoramic view of the neighborhood.