The current vogue in bush flying and popular STOL culture is to shove the stick forward at the beginning of the take off roll and the yank it back down with a more or less violent rotation. Often you see the tailwheel slapping the ground again. The argument is that lifting the tail reduced the AoA of the wing and therefore cause less drag. I would question this.
At the beginning of the take off roll, when they do this, drag is minimal anyway because speed is minimal. producing a couple of hundred pounds of lift to get the tail up dwith very little forward speed must in itself cause a lot of drag. Is the trade off worth it? Could somebody with a more mathematical mind crunch the numbers? Do I need Calculus of will Mr Newton suffice for this?
There are some people out there who have done comparisons and found no real benefit. If this method was so superior, would they not have used it for carrier take offs in WW2 (before they used catapults)? The Cessna 170 POH states for best short field take off the aircraft should be flown off in a three point attitude. You'd think Cessna had this figured out but every "bush" flying video out there does it the other way. I understand the concern about tailwheel damage but lifting it a couple of inches does the job, it doesn't need to be three feet up in the air.
Opinions? Facts?
At the beginning of the take off roll, when they do this, drag is minimal anyway because speed is minimal. producing a couple of hundred pounds of lift to get the tail up dwith very little forward speed must in itself cause a lot of drag. Is the trade off worth it? Could somebody with a more mathematical mind crunch the numbers? Do I need Calculus of will Mr Newton suffice for this?
There are some people out there who have done comparisons and found no real benefit. If this method was so superior, would they not have used it for carrier take offs in WW2 (before they used catapults)? The Cessna 170 POH states for best short field take off the aircraft should be flown off in a three point attitude. You'd think Cessna had this figured out but every "bush" flying video out there does it the other way. I understand the concern about tailwheel damage but lifting it a couple of inches does the job, it doesn't need to be three feet up in the air.
Opinions? Facts?