Back Seat Driver

Flying from the back isn’t that practical, but it sure was fun to learn

Just for the fun of it, I decided to learn to fly my taildragger from the back seat. There’s a stick. PTT, throttle and carb heat in the back, but from there you can’t change the radio frequency, adjust the mixture, hit the start button or manipulate any of the panel controls. Because there has to be a person in the front, you can’t see much, either.

Nonetheless, I wanted the challenge, so I enlisted the help of one of my favorite instructors and off we went. Taxiing was more Pitts or P-51 or Stearman than Citabria, with S-turns a requirement for seeing what’s in front of you. Suddenly the taxiways seemed much narrower.

The runup and mag check were normal. I dictated a pre-takeoff flow...