"I Just Flew a Super Decathlon!"
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| "I don't know what to do with my hands." Photo by Don. |
Enter Tango Whiskey Aviation, an aerobatic flight school with operations at the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester Area International Airport (KROC) and the Williamson-Sodus Airport (KSDC) where we share bays in the same hangar building. I have known Tango Whiskey cofounder Don H since the days when we both based aircraft at the Le Roy Airport. Eventually, we both became Williamson Flying Club members. In a nutshell, Don is either an aviation polymath or suffers from severe ADD. (Maybe both.) He is a high energy, enthusiastic aviator who flies for NetJets to put food on the table and provides aerobatic and upset recovery training under the Tango Whiskey umbrella while instructing aspiring rotary wing pilots with BAC Helicopters owned by my mechanic Ray. He recently shared with me that he was buying a Cessna 150 from my former hangar neighbor at Sodus to teach his kids how to fly.
Tango Whiskey has a fleet of three aerobatic aircraft: an American Champion Super Decathlon (8KCAB), a Pitts S2B, and an Extra 300L. My goals for the flight review included a tailwheel refresh (it's been 7 years) and to experience a spin (because I never have). For this mission, the Super Decathlon was exactly the right airplane for the job and perhaps less of a handful than the other two. As a bonus, despite having known him for over 15 years, I looked forward to flying with Don for the first time.
Getting Cozy with a Hooker (Harness)
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 19 May 2025 | N248MA 8KCAB | ROC (Rochester, NY) - D52 (Genseo, NY) - ROC | 1.1 | 2978.5 |
I met Don at the US Airports FBO on the south side of the Greater Rochester International Airport on a beautiful spring day. Nevertheless, I was anxious about managing a 15 knot gusty crosswind for my first taildragger stick time in seven years. "This will be a piece of cake," Don said to me beforehand. "You fly so often, you're practically a professional." It was high praise, but I wondered if I could possibly deliver on those expectations in that wind.
Don assigned some conventional flight review homework (FAA's ALC-25 Flight Review Prep Guide and AOPA's Know Before You Go: Navigating Today's Airspace) that I completed the day before. We discussed that material and completed the ground portion of the review in US Airports' conference room, grabbed our headsets, and headed outside into the restless wind where the Super D was already waiting on the apron.
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| Me at the controls of Dave's Super Decathlon in 2003. I miss that shirt. Photo by Dave. |
Climbing into the Decathlon was a full circle moment for me in that I spent many hours in the back seat of my mentor's Decathlon in the early 2000s. This time, instead of Dave sitting up front, it was me. I was rusty, but remembered the basics of buckling the Hooker five point harness.
I took in the basic instrument panel, knowledgeable with its general layout from past experience while still finding the specifics unfamiliar. Don walked me through engine start and within minutes of bringing the fuel-injected 180 horsepower Lycoming to life, we were taxiing from the 700 Ramp to the departure end of runway 25.
Compared to the J-3 Cub, forward visibility from the front seat of the Super D was excellent and there was no need to S-turn while taxiing. As with any taildragger, each rudder input required positive cancelation with opposite rudder to prevent the tail's momentum from yawing the airplane more than intended. Compared to the J-3, I found the rudder of the Decathlon to be significantly heavier, which reduced the crispness of some of my turns. When I commented on the heavy rudder, Don responded, "Yeah, you've got a barn door back there, especially compared to your Piper." Still, at least my tailwheel training with Damian in 2017 stuck well enough that my ground handling was competent.
Despite the crosswind, take-off was perfunctory. "That was all you," Don noted as we ascended into the blue. Don suggested power settings as we transitioned from climb to cruise. With only an hour of time in airplanes equipped with a blue knob prop control, I struggled a bit to remember that throttle sets manifold pressure instead of RPM the way it does in most airplanes I have flown.
After some basic maneuvers with the airplane including turns in slow flight/minimum controllable airspeed, Don coached me through some stalls. Though relatively docile, stall breaks were more abrupt and ended in a greater downward pitch than Warrior 481. My stall recoveries went well.
PAREing Back
In the ground session, we talked a lot about what causes airplanes to spin, going beyond the rote "one wing being more stalled than the other" definition that every private pilot is taught. Rather than conduct a full-on spin clinic with me, Don wanted to focus on incipient spins and how to get out of them. We discussed the PARE acronym for spin recovery popularized by instructor Rich Stowell:
Power out
Ailerons neutral
Rudder opposite the direction of the spin
Elevator forward to unload the wing
We climbed to 6,000 feet and positioned ourselves over a massive hole in the scattered cloud deck. Don had me slow the airplane to the edge of a stall, nose high, with the stall warning horn blaring. "OK, this is going to feel very wrong, but I want you to take your feet off the rudder pedals, put them flat on the floor, then give me a right turn with aileron only."
He was right. That felt incredibly wrong.
As the airplane shuddered from turbulent air roiling over the tail from nearly stalled wings, Don goosed in some power and stomped on the left rudder. The power added energy to an already adverse scenario and top rudder pushed the left wing -- already critical -- over the edge so that it stalled hard. In what subjectively took a fraction of a second, the Decathlon dropped her left wing aggressively, smoothly rolled onto her back, and nosed straight down.
This may sound like it must have been a violent maneuver, but I perceived no sense of motion or force as the view from the windscreen rapidly transitioned from pure blue sky to nothing but farmland. Despite not feeling flung around, I appreciated the firm embrace of the Hooker harness.
"OK, recover," Don prompted from the backseat. I worked through the PARE process and returned the airplane to straight and level flight. "Well done. How much altitude did you lose?"
The altimeter now showed 5,000' and we had plummeted through the altitude of the scattered cloud layer. "One thousand feet," I reported back. It was an excellent object lesson on why stall/spin accidents at 1,000 feet in the airport traffic pattern are inevitably unrecoverable.
Slip-Slip
With the 5,000 foot long grass runway of the Geneseo Airport in sight, I pulled the power back slightly for a standard 500 foot/minute descent and set myself up for an appropriate pattern entry. From the back seat, Don chided, "It's an aerobatic airplane! Chop and drop!" So I did.
Lined up on final for runway 5, I could see that the windsock indicated a direct crosswind and that the sock was steadily and fully extended, indicating that the atmosphere was moving across the field at a minimum of fifteen knots. "Give me a three point landing," Don prompted. I accomplished the landing with a bounce and a deviation toward the downwind side of the runway. "Not bad, let's do it again." Once again noticing how heavy the rudder was, I realigned the airplane with the runway before accelerating for takeoff.
The second one was more of the same. The third time around, I decided to make a wheel landing. On short final, I established a steady descent rate and a stable sideslip to the left. "A little slip-slip! Nice!" encouraged Don. I greased the Decathlon onto the turf on the upwind main wheel, rolled along for a few moments amazed at how stable the landing felt despite the crosswind. I brought the downwind wheel to the ground and finally the tail.
From behind me, Don grabbed my shoulder and shook it. "That was awesome! That was a single main wheel landing!" It felt good. Maybe I should have stopped there because the fourth landing was not nearly as smooth.
We launched from Geneseo and I pointed in the general direction of the Rochester airport. I was disappointed in my performance at Geneseo and wished I had calmer wind for my tailwheel refresher. Once faced with the unforgiving pavement of Rochester's runway 25, I asked Don to make the landing. We bounced a couple of times and lurched to the right in the strong left crosswind.
"Not one of my best," Don conceded. For me, it was validating.
"Well, I feel better about some of my landings at Geneseo now," I added as I switched the radio to Rochester's ground frequency.
"Hey!" complained Don before keying the mic and requesting a return to US Airports.
I taxied the Decathlon to a parking spot between the FBO building and another aircraft parked on the ramp, receiving a thumbs up from the lineman to indicate that we were in a good spot. Once the prop stopped, he came forward to chock the airplane and removed a chunk of Geneseo's turf from the right main wheel that we'd carried back to Rochester with us. He held it up for us to see with a wry expression on his face. Don only laughed. "Yeah, that happens sometimes."
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| Chris and Don at the end of the flight review. |
Debrief
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| I still don't know what to do with my hands. Photo by Don. |
Overall, I was pleased with my full circle moment in the Decathlon. I was discouraged by only making one good landing out of four at Geneseo, but Don was quick to point out that I was rusty on tailwheel flying (not that I had a huge base of experience to begin with), new to the Decathlon, and working in some challenging conditions. I really appreciated experiencing the incipient spin recovery -- it's not a maneuver that I can legally perform in my Warrior. (Warriors are prohibited from intentional spins.) I was able to stretch my envelope a bit and that is always a good thing. Naturally, the basic purpose of the flight was satisfied and Don signed me off for a successful completion of a flight review. And finally, it was great to finally fly with Don, who is both knowledgeable and a lot of fun.
Because the afternoon was still early and I had the entire day off, I drove to Sodus and took Warrior 481 out for a flight. Burrowing through a restless atmosphere, I was amazed at how much easier my usual steed was to fly. Despite the various atmospheric bumps and burbles, instrument panel scans revealed each needle to be pinned exactly where it needed to be.
