Ready to go shopping for a pre-owned taildragger? Our advice hasn’t changed. Before buying anything, have a real conversation with your insurance broker to identify potential deal breakers and what an insurer will demand for training. Think practically. Insurers tell us that complex, high-horsepower machines in the hands of newly endorsed pilots (older ones, too) are a higher risk.
“We see that pilots are having the same kinds of wrecks in taildraggers now as they historically have, and that’s by groundlooping them,” Marci Veronie at Avemco told us. But even if you are a risk, you don’t have to bottom feed the market. There are plenty of choices of modern, good-performing used taildraggers, and most come at a price premium. We found some nice ones in the CubCrafters pre-owned inventory.