On the eleventh day of Christmas...

Pick your top ten favourite aircraft of all times. Now, tell me, how many of these are tailwheel aircraft? Hmmm? My point. For Christmas, I would like a tailwheel endorsement. Because it's fun. Because it's different. Because it opens the door to a whole new world of flying adventures.

This post is the eleventh in The Twelve Days of Christmas: An Aviation Gift Guide, a series of posts on Christmas wishes by a number of aviation bloggers. Make sure you check out all the other posts for a range of very diverse aviation wishes, dreams, and talented bloggers!

From what I've heard and read, flying a taildragger is not in itself harder than flying a tricycle-gear aircraft, it is just different. In cruise the aircraft behaves the same as a tricycle-gear aircraft, it is the taxi, take-off and landing phases of flight that are more challenging. There is reduced forward visibility while taxiing to contend with, increased P-torque effects on take-off and higher sensitivity to crosswind in the landing phase. Tailwheel aircraft do not tolerate sloppy landings the same way other aircraft do, which is a good thing training-wise.

I always enjoy watching the flying videos that French private pilot Jean-Claude Garnavaud regularly puts up on his blog Carnet de Vol. Jean-Claude flies a Piper J-3 with the Aéro-Club Hispano-Suiza at Cergy-Pontoise aerodrome near Paris. The Cub is so much fun to fly he says that he does not see the point of cross-country flying, circuits and local flights are all he needs!

I had a look at taildragger schools at Camden airport near Sydney. Most of them instruct in the Citabria. The time they quoted for a tailwheel endorsement ranges from five to ten hours and the price per hour is comparable to that of hiring an Archer. The whole endorsement won't cost me much more than a Bose-X headset, and I already have a headset.

The fact that many taildraggers are also certified for aerobatics adds to the attraction. I wouldn't mind trying my hand at a few wingovers, spins, loops or rolls during the endorsement training.

The range of new airplanes available for hire by a private pilot with a tailwheel endorsement reads like an airshow line-up: Tiger Moth, Chipmunk, T-6 Texan, Cessna 180, Pitts Special and even a Beechcraft Staggerwing. And that's only for the two flying schools I visited at Camden airport.

A whole new world of flying indeed. So make yourself happy, or make your favourite pilot happy, and put a tailwheel endorsement on your aviation wish list for 2010!

On the fifth day of Christmas...

A few fellow aviation bloggers and I have decided to hang our Christmas stockings to the same virtual fireplace and take turns at blogging about what we wish for Christmas. This ranges so far from a Cirrus SR-22 to Monika Petrillo's FlyAbout DVD, aviation coasters and one very impressive pilot watch.

For Christmas, I would like a Portable Collision Avoidance System, such as Zaon's PCAS MRX. This system is just as portable as a hand-held GPS unit and provides alerts on nearby traffic as long as other traffic is transponder-equipped and there is an interrogating system nearby, such as a secondary radar or an airliner overhead.

Priced at USD 449 on skygeek.com, this is a very good investment for anyone who has come too close for comfort with another aircraft and wish he had identified the threat before it turned into a real danger. I'm thinking for example of entry points to busy GA airports such as the only two compulsory entry points for Sydney's Bankstown airport. Max Trescott also identified a number of similar local hotspots such as navaids and prominent geographic features.

Blogger pilotbrad ordered the Zaon MRX, unpacked it, started using it and already reported one instance of the system picking up an aircraft Brad and his instructor would have missed otherwise.

A portable system is ideal for pilots who do not always fly the same aircraft such as private pilots who hire aircraft from flying clubs and flight instructors who may instruct in a dozen different aircraft in the course of one week. A large flying school in the US just decided to buy the Zaon product for all their flight instructors rather than equip the airplanes.

For the price of two or three hours of aircraft hire, a PCAS system may well represent the best investment for improving in-flight safety. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Santa always takes his PCAS with him whichever sledge he's flying, even though NORAD is tracking him.