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"This book covers the basics for an initial tailwheel and ski checkout and contains commentary on the finer points of these topics. It is meant to be useful not only to the beginner first making the transition, but also to provide insights to the pilot or instructor who is already flying these kinds of airplanes. Most skiplanes are tailwheel airplanes and in the northern latitudes, ski flying is a seasonal variation of tailwheel flying. A lot of people fly a tailwheel airplane on wheels in the summer, then put the same airplane on skis in the winter. A tailwheel checkout is often followed up with a ski checkout and the author keeps to that same sequence of events in this book. Readers will benefit from clear explanations that have proven effective with students throughout the author's extensive career, distilled from two decades of experience in flying and flight instructing in tailwheel airplanes and skiplanes. An orderly presentation of all the topics required to develop tailwheel/ski competence are included for both basic topics (needed for the tailwheel checkout required by regulations) and advanced topics (such as flying multiengine tailwheel airplanes and ski-flying on glaciers and sea-ice). The book does more than just explain the list of topics, it anticipates and preemptively addresses the questions and difficulties experienced by the average student. It presents the material according to an organization the author has found to be effective in the course of his own instructing. In addition, you will be exposed to insights about the learning process that will help prepare you for flight training"--Provided by publisher.
About the author
Burke Mees was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, but has spent most of his career flying commercially in Alaska. In 1994 he took a summer job over the phone flying seaplanes in Juneau and never managed to leave. He went on to fly in the Aleutian Islands and later moved to the Anchorage area. Burke's first experience flying tailwheel airplanes was as a young flight instructor -- he got a checkout in a 1946 Aeronca Champ for the express purpose of teaching a 69-year-old woman to fly it. All three survived that project and he has been flying tailwheel airplanes ever since. In Anchorage, Burke started flying skis both privately and for hire, which has included flying reporters along the Iditarod trail, providing instruction for ski checkouts and flying on the local mountain glaciers. Burke says that for him, flying has always been a matter of honest work, but it is also something enjoyed. He looks at it as an art that can continually be refined, and flight instructing has always been a way to do that. He says that, "There's no better way to explore a topic in aviation than to organize your thoughts and teach it to someone else." Currently his day job is flying as a 737 Captain in Alaska, but he still keeps his CFI current and does some instructing on the side.
