Andy, it's not about slamming it in or about damage. You certainly can fly them off pavement. The big difference between a tail dragger and tricycle gear is where the weight is located in relation to the main gear. When taking off or landing the weight wants to be ahead of the main gear. This is what makes a tail dragger more dificult in ground handling. Small changes in direction on takeoff or landing tend to cause the airplane to dart on pavement. On grass the tires tend to slide making the airplane less touchy. This is based on over a thousand hours of tailwheel flying including about 200 houts of insrruction given in tailwheel aircraft.MrMorden wrote:We have tons of taildraggers at my paved home field, the only gear failure we ever had was a Cessna 170 that had a rusted through tail wheel attach bracket break. I did have a friend in a Piper Pacer hit a divot on a grass strip and flip on its back though.3Dreaming wrote:
Actually the airplanes do care. Landing on grass is much more forgiving than pavement. Not such a big deal for tricycle gear aircraft, but it certainly is for a tail dragger.
Unless you slam it in, I still don't think the airplane cares.
To put it in something that may be more familiar it is kind of like the difference between race cars on dirt compared to pavement.