A flight school only for tailwheel pilots

The first thing you notice about the Ace Basin Aviation Flight School at Lowcountry Regional Airport (KRBW) in Walterboro, South Carolina, is that each of the 12 aircraft in the company hangar has the third wheel on the back. Clearly, this is a place for tailwheel flying instruction.

The boss of the operation is Todd Givens, a pilot and a certificated flight instructor for more than two decades. During the last 20 years Givens has built a solid reputation as one of the country’s top tailwheel instructors, training more than 100 pilots for tailwheel endorsements and successfully instructing another 20 private pilots through to their check rides.

“When people call, I explain that I only train pilots who want an endorsement to fly tailwheel aircraft, plus pilots who are considering the purchase of a tailwheel aircraft, and finally students who want to earn their private pilot license in a tailwheel aircraft,” he explained.

Four of the aircraft in Givens’ 100- x 110-foot hangar at KRBW are his own, and he teaches in all of them. The other aircraft belong to former students.

“Primarily I train tailwheel students in my Cessna 120 (N3085N), my Luscombe (N2282K), and my Citabria (N1672G),” he noted.

He also uses his Cessna 170B (N3462C) for instruction.

Two other flight school aircraft are a Boeing Stearman (N62105) and a second Luscombe (N2651K), both hangared at Givens’ nearby grass airstrip, Hannah Rhea Field (29SC) in rural Colleton County.

“I don’t do endorsements in just one airplane,” Givens continued. “I start students out in the Cessna 170B or the Luscombe and then transition to the Citabria. You need to fly both an airplane with a stick and heel brakes and also a plane with a control wheel and toe brakes. I want them to have the experience and see the difference.”

“The time needed for an endorsement is totally up to the ability of the individual,” he added. “First, we just talk about the tailwheel aircraft and other planes. How the tailwheel plane weathervanes into the wind. How it turns. The tailwheel airplane has more adverse yaw than other airplanes. Then we take off and climb up and fly some. Some steep turns and slow flight and power on and power off stalls. We start with good stabilized approaches and three-point landings. I have them shadow me on landings and after that take a break, usually an hour or an hour and a half. We go back up and do three-point landings with eyes straight ahead and roll out to a full stop. I don’t teach touch and goes in a tailwheel airplane. The transition of getting the tail down and rolling out to a full stop keeping it straight is very important.”

Givens noted he likes to put suction cups over the airspeed indicator and the attitude indicator.

“I tell students you’ve got a VFR attitude indicator out the window of the airplane and you are flying with minimum instruments and maximum feel,” he explained. “I teach light pressure changes on the controls. Nine seconds outside looking and one second inside. That is VFR flying because you can see a pitch change or adverse yaw before an instrument moves. If you are looking inside, you will be behind the airplane.”

Givens said many of the pilots who come to him already have a tailwheel endorsement but are not confident operating in windy weather.

“They got the training and the endorsement, maybe in four or five hours, but they can’t handle crosswinds in a taildragger,” he said. “That’s why it takes more than four or five hours to learn properly. You’ve got to add wheel landings to three pointers and then you’ve got to be able to handle those crosswinds. To me, 10 hours of training is a good rule of thumb for training in all the elements. And the crosswind work is vital.”

“First, know your crosswind component,” Givens explained. “Figure that number by taking the difference between the wind and the runway headings and then add 20 to the number and that becomes the percentage of the crosswind or crosswind component. At the beginning don’t try to land in more than a five-knot direct crosswind. For the landing, get the wing down on that side and maintain the centerline with aileron. Round out and be patient, hold it off.”

“For the crosswind wheel landing, that is touching on the mains only and not three points. You have to be a little more patient and you have to be a little faster,” he explained. “Add a little power and it gives you time. You land in a tail low attitude. Aileron input stays the same as you’re slowing down. If you’re not maintaining the centerline because of too much crosswind, you don’t need to land. Go somewhere else.”

The Givens family is from nearby Sniders Crossroads, where he and his father built Hannah Rhea Field in 2001.

Todd’s dad, Benjamin Givens, a career Civil Service employee and Air Force Reserve member, learned to fly in the 1970s at the Charleston Aero Club and passed along a lot of his interest in aviation to his son.

Todd began work as a welder after graduation from Walterboro High School in 1987 and eventually earned his private pilot’s certificate in 2002.

“I was buying rubber band airplanes and flying them in the back yard as a boy,” he said. “Later I was flying radio-controlled airplanes. I had been around airplanes all my life. I just had to figure out how to support myself with airplanes.”

Following in his father’s footsteps, Todd joined the Air Force Reserve out of high school, also serving at the air force base in Charleston. He specialized in aircraft maintenance and became a C-17 crew chief. Father and son were called to active duty after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers.

Todd and his wife Anita built a successful cleaning business in the early years of their marriage, but what he wanted most of all was to get his advanced ratings and be involved fully in aviation.

“I got my instrument and instructor ratings in 2011-2012 and founded the flight school soon afterward,” Givens said.

He first operated from a small hangar at KRBW. In 2018 he and the school received an Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Flight Training Experience Award as a Southeast Distinguished Flight School and Instructor honoree. He moved into the larger hangar in 2019 as the business expanded. These days the flight school is a full-time pursuit.

Within five minutes of beginning a conversation with Givens it becomes clear he is a teacher who lives and breathes tailwheel flying. He enjoys carrying on a discussion with a model aircraft in one hand while gesturing with the other, demonstrating the finer points and typical failings of takeoffs, landings, slips, stalls, and a variety of other relevant flight instruction requisites.

Givens also learns something during each lesson.

“Learning from students, that’s what make flight instructing so much fun,” he said. “You don’t know who is going to walk through your door — a heart surgeon, someone who cuts grass for a living, an airline pilot, or a C-17 pilot. That is the best part of all. You truly get to know your students. I feel like I’m a better pilot today than yesterday because of learning from other people.”

Listening to Givens, it quickly becomes obvious that his immaculately restored 1947 Luscombe 8E is one of his two favorite aircraft.

“I had my CFI check ride in that Luscombe,” he said. “Once I flew a Luscombe and started flying regularly, sitting in a 172 was like sitting in a dentist chair. The plane has character, it is so different.  You smile because you are flying an airplane, you are not a system manager.”

His other favorite aircraft? The Stearman.

“I have to say that if I could only have one airplane it would be a Stearman,” he said.

It was in his Stearman that Givens had one of his most memorable flight lessons.

“Kim Hunter flew for the airlines,” Givens said. “He told me he would retire soon and wanted to get current with his tailwheel flying endorsement. We started flying and it was an emotional moment. He said he had waited his whole life for this. It was real flying, not a push-button autopilot at 37,000 feet. It was the honest feel of an airplane.”

“There is nothing at all wrong with all the other kinds of flying,” he added. “It’s not that one is better than the other. But I think it is awesome that a 747 pilot can come here and appreciate the other kind of flying.”

Givens has about 7,000 hours in his logbook. That includes more than 17,000 tailwheel landings, about 600 hours of Stearman time, and approximately 150 hours of nosewheel time.

“Nearly all of the time in my logbook is instructing,” he said. “I truly love what I’m doing and I hope I can do it until I draw my last breath.”