Many people dismiss tail draggers as old fashioned, or superfluous to their dreams of airline flying, but even before I'd finished my flight training, I knew that I wanted to fly tail draggers. Aeroncas, Cessnas, Pipers, heck my pipe dreams included Harvards, Mustangs and Beech 18s. So as soon as I received my license, I set off to get some training in a tail wheel airplane. That search wasn't as quick as I thought it would be. In a city of one-million people, there were only two schools offering instruction, both in Citabrias.

I selected Canadian Flight Training and their pilot, Doug Jenkins. Doug was a semi-retired commercial pilot. He'd been there, done that and was instructing simply for the fun of it. Plus, he was a long-time competitive aerobatic pilot with years of Citabria experience.

The first time I sat in the pilot's seat, I knew that this was how an airplane was supposed to feel - a stick in the right hand, throttles in the left, and your passengers seated out of sight behind you. Just as the flying gods had intended it to be.

Compared to say, pretty much any other tail dragger I'd played around in as a kid, the Citabria had a fantastic view over the nose. Where every book I'd read talked about S-turns and poor visibility, I started out not really worried about seeing what was in front of me. Instead I was more concerned about placing the flight controls in the right place to compensate for the wind. Thankfully most of my early flights were in low wind conditions.

When I started out, I had somewhere between 90 and 100 hours in Cessna 172s and Twin Navions. Both were tricycles. My biggest worry was when Doug told me to push the stick forward as we started rolling down the runway. No, wait. Pushing forward means putting the prop into the ground right? I knew I didn't want this, and it took several attempts before I convinced myself it would be okay. The sloped cowling of the Citabria really made for the illusion that I was putting the prop into the runway, but as Doug quickly showed me, it takes a lot of force to go beyond the level attitude.

Of course, with my hesitancy to bring the plane up to the level attitude came a lack of directional stability. And a couple times I felt out of control, as I careened towards the runway's edge. Luckily when that happened I had some airspeed and yanked it off before reaching the grass. Once I'd gotten up and on the level, I found it easier to control.

Once in the air the Citabria became just another airplane. We flew it around for a little while, just so I'd get familiar with it. Stalls didn't really break; even with the stick fully back we just mushed our way downwards. Pushing the stick forward broke the stall, and out we flew. We also did some spins. Unlike the Cessna 172, the Citabria actually like spinning. I didn't.

Confident that I could handle the plane, we returned to the circuit.

The first lesson I was taught was also the most important lesson I learned. Keep the stick back. Come hell or high water, burning engine or missing wing, keep the stick back. After that, it was all about getting the plane on the ground.

After a couple hours, I was starting to feel really comfortable. And with the fighter-like layout of the controls, I guess I started getting cocky. Having no flaps, and keeping the nose down for visibility, I ended up diving on the unsuspecting student pilots ahead of me. I even joked about making a ring gun sight and attaching it to the cowl.

When it came time to practice crosswind landings it became apparent that I'd made the right decision in choosing Doug. It turned out that he was also a former air traffic controller at the airport, and when he requested a special circuit so we could practice on the closed runway, he got it - reduced circuit height and all. While the others were aligning themselves with the north-south runway, we were doing dog-bone shaped circuits on the east-west. It worked out fine, and I didn't get too comfortable with making the same corrections.

By the time I'd logged a dozen hours, I was confident that I could take a tail dragger around the pea patch and return it safely to earth. Obviously I knew that I'd need more practice, especially when it came to strong winds and crosswinds, but that experience would come with each and every tail dragger I flew.