What are flaps?

Robert

The "boing-o-matic" is an amazing feature given that this is 1940 technology...

It's auto-deployment activates with excessive airspeed on landing, to deactivate simply slow down before committing to the landing and the plane will touch down without a hint of a bounce.

Hilgard

Lots of good points here. Add one, and that is when doing wheel landings, do not anticipate the touch down, don't pin it until it is on.

In Citabrias if I had a student who was afraid to "pin it" on....worried about hitting the prop, I would have them sit in the cockpit, with the prop vertical, and raise the tail. The nose is lower than they think before the prop is close. Of course if you are bouncing, all bets are off.

You also have to consider compression/flexing of the landing gear. In many taildragers that can reduce prop clearance by several inches.

Last sentence....you are right, it is more than just when bouncing.

I note your experience in twin cessnas.
I own a Grumman Widgeon, and have owned Pitts, CE180, and Helio Courier.
Advice:
1. Watch videos of WW2 tailwheel planes landing. Note they usually use a tail-low
technique and make wheel landings. Wheel landings are the only kind I ever use,
because the full stall (aka 3 point ) use a speed that is on the back side of the power curve.

2. Line the cessna up on centerline- touch down with Zero Crab at 1.2VS. Push fwd on the wheel and leave the power in on touchdow. Fly it on with power like the big cessnas.

3. use a max cosswind component of 5 kts until you have the touchdown at a comfortable level of competence. 10 knts max x-wind after that. And, grass is best to learn on.

Re: Technique

I set the airplane up in the flare and very very carefully try to get the tail low and touch on the mains with as much energy off the airplane as I can...

...then...

I take whatever I get and deal with it.

After using accumulated Barnes and Noble gift cards my Aunt gave me for Christmas to purchase the following Books,
Stick and Rudder
The Compleat Taildragger Pilot
Taming The Taildragger
I can say that I'm very glad I did not part with cash from my pocket for the books. The money would be much better spent on avgas and practice, or one hour with a knowledgable instructor.
There are only so many ways to tell you to land aligned with the runway with no drift, and then keep it straight.
And this is really only learned in the airplane while flying it, which is a million times more fun than reading about it.

Greg

Stick and Rudder is a good read for all pilots but not particularly taildragger centric.

The Compleat Taildragger is a worthwhile read for a newbie taildragger pilot but no substitute for good instruction. I haven't read Taming but suspect that it's redundant if you already have Compleat.

I probably should have bought the books BEFORE I flew 200 hrs and did 600 landings.

Greg