100 hours before you can solo in it?
Wait till you go mountain flying in the cub! Its one way to get the flying bug back in you!
The 100-hour minimum is the school's insurance minimum. Ken did tell me if he didn't have that requirement he wouldn't have had any problem with me soloing the airplane.
That was one of the things that made me accelerate the idea of owning a taildragger. In his plane, it would cost me about $15K to get up to his minimums just to rent his SuperCub. Why spend that to RENT his plane, when I could spend that to OWN a plane with a lot of equity, because a lot of owner policies only require 25-30 hours time in the plane. I could buy one, keep it at his field, fly it with him for a while and be WAY under that.
Until you actually fly one, you don't get a feel for the real challenge. And that is what's so much fun about flying tailwheel, at least to the newbie; it's challenging. You gotta constantly watch for deviations and correct, and then undo the correction. It's a full-time job. As Ken explained to me..."you fly a 172 down to the runway, right? But you fly a taildragger all the way to the tiedowns."
I also like the fact that you can convert a wheel landing to a 3-pointer, and vice-versa, depending on conditions at the time. You have options with a tailwheel that you don't have with a tricycle gear. Actually, my BEST landings were where he told me, "hold it off the deck - I want you to fly the plane a foot above the runway and not land it."
What he wanted me to do was land, but in tricking myself into "not landing" I was keeping it razor-straight down the runway (rudder two-step again) and compensating for the wind AND - most importantly - landing the plane when it was ready to land. I can see this as an effective technique for ANY student, actually. If they keep it straight and manage the energy properly, they're gonna give you a great landing every time. At least, that's how it was for me.
The only convert-the-landing scenarios for me were in a case where I did bounce. In those cases, depending on how high it was, it was simpler to just yank the stick back and let the plane settle down and work it with the feet. If it was a higher bounce, power up and go around. I only had that problem on pavement, though, and only (according to Ken) because of the beefy undercarriage and fat tires. Other than that, he said, my technique was just fine.