The technology options in GA aircraft today are getting quite interesting.
Taxi camera for taildraggers:
It does raise the question though about the line between useful technology applications and gadgetry. Clearly though, different folks have different strokes and some (fresh?) tailwheel pilots might find this useful while old-timers might scoff at it as a crutch for those without the necessary piloting skills 
Waiting for an infrared camera of this size to add to my Cessna for low-viz/night instrument approaches 
chflyer wrote:
while old-timers might scoff at it as a crutch for those without the necessary piloting skills
Just see the endless discussion concerning GPS as opposed to VOR, I don’t pay them much heed. Use the useful gadgets that won’t take too much time fiddling with them.
I learned to fly in a tailwheel plane, but one with a little tiny engine and plenty of forward view. It was simple fun, and one less gear leg was a good thing.
Later, when my horizons spread to flying tailwheel aircraft with larger engines I decided that planes having no forward view in the most critical phases of operation are a really unfortunate artifact of history, and that this was the reason why tricycle gear was invented. That was a real technological development, putting a little camera on the front of your plane is not technology.
I might make an exception for a Pitts.
I might make an exception for a Pitts.
The Pitts is a dream to fly, and a nightmare to land. If you land power-off, as I was taught, you can at least see the runway. If you carry some power, to keep your descent rate to something reasonable, you have to slip to see where you’re going. Close to the ground it’s even worse – you can see precisely nothing ahead, and do everything with peripheral vision. Surprisingly, it gets quite easy with practice. But once I stopped doing it regularly, my occasional flights in the Pitts were once again a serious challenge for the landing.
There is one plane which is even worse, the Cessna 195. The windshield is tiny and you can’t even count on peripheral vision to the right. My Pitts instructor had given someone primary PPL instruction in one, and confirmed that it is truly awful. Although he did also say that the only plane harder to land than the Pitts is the U2, of which he has plenty of experience.
It doesn’t HAVE to be that bad though. The Citabria/Decathlon has good visibility over the nose, certainly plenty for taxiing – no need for a camera in one of those. And the Extra is a lot more like a Citabria than a Pitts, visibility wise.
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There is one plane which is even worse, the Cessna 195
As a friend of mine says, a C195 has everything bad about an old plane and a new plane rolled into one design. Old fashioned, needlessly hard to operate configuration combined with modern hard to repair monocoque construction. And in that light a Bellanca Viking is just perfect, right?
I guess it depends on your preferences.
A Luscombe also has unlimited visibility over the nose.
Silvaire wrote:
I might make an exception for a Pitts.
What about ForeFlight Synt-Vision? my problem grass runway is not on FF database and I get nervous in Pitts in big runways that are in FF database: taxi one all the way to from T3-Apron-T1 at LeTouquet on a very windy day: wet pants and hands guaranteed
I don’t think a taxi camera for a taildragger is technology overkill, but rather it is a weird mishmash of anachronisms, since a taildragger as such is the opposite of “technology”.
In principle I am in favour of using modern technology to enhance the experience and possibilities of flying GA aircraft. The advancements in cars in the last decades are indicative of what is possible. The only problem is that the weight penalty of additional gadgets is much more severe in aircraft than it is in cars, where the greatly increased motorisation has offset the weight increase.
What makes weight less of an issue for cars is that for a given weight the power used to overcome rolling friction is less than the power used to overcome the induced drag that holds an aircraft of equivalent weight in the air. A train then takes this even further by eliminating rubber tires, which are most significant source of rolling friction in a car.
Between those three cases is a trade-off between flexibility and efficiency, typical of how engineering and life in general works. The plane can go in any direction, the car needs roads, the train can only go where rails allow it to go.
chflyer wrote:
It does raise the question though about the line between useful technology applications and gadgetry.
If it improves safety and is easy to install, then why not. Some tail draggers have notoriously bad view to the front.
I recently installed a rear view cam on my old Camry because the parking spaces in our parkhouse make for lots of dents. Gadget? Yes. Useful? You bet.
