The International Cessna 170 Association

I talked today with someone very familiar with the L-19 (amazing what you can learn when walking around airports and hangars).
Early L-19; Tail section is identical to the 170B...identical. The only differences to the exacting eye; the L-19 horizontal stab has a row of rivnuts on the outer ribs, top and bottom for the attachment of ventral fins for float ops and L.E has provisions for homing antennas. All parts have zinc chromate finish. After an upping the gross weight made to the L-19 by Cessna, now the parts are a bit different. Trim tab is bigger, screw jack bigger, the main tailwheel spring is beefier, the spring stack has three leaves, the fish mount is a bit different at the aft end (no notch), the U- bolt is heavier, the plate (fitting) on the top of the fish mouth does not have a tail and the tailwheel has the turned up arms which are heavier for exactly the reasons George previously mentioned.
I've got to return to this airfield to get another lesson and get another tour to take pictures.

I switched to the long pawl when I rebuilt my tailwheel this summer. The dust covers needed replacing anyway so I figured I'd give it a shot. I noticed that when I'm taxiing around I can make some corners with just rudder when previously I would have needed a dab of brake to get the tail swinging. For practical purposes it doesn't matter at all. It might make sense if you are struggling with getting the tailwheel to break during ground maneuvering. During takeoff and landing there shouldn't be any difference because it should be in the detent with either pawl.

Thanks Brian, for that report. Hadn't considered, or at least can remember ever doing so, the possibility the tail wheel breaking out early might actually help taxi operations cause the rudder alone would turn the aircraft. Of course there really wasn't anything we could do about it till now. Hmmm, going to have to think this over.

Thanks again for all of the input. My tw was steering well to the right, but not at all to the left. When I disassembled my tw, I found that the notch in the steering arm was worn out on one side. Since I needed to replace the steering arm anyway, I opted to purchase the bent steering arm.

When I was ordering parts, I noticed that there was a part called short pawl and long pawl. This part did not need to be replaced, but I was curious how they each impacted steering. This led to my original question on this site.

Taking my tw apart and replacing the worn out steering arm was a good experience. I now know more about how the TW mechanism works.

Terri