I bought an airplane

[scottieb]

My wife's step father has a vintage Piper Cub. These are fun planes. It'll run on av gas or pump gas. It's neat that the pilot sits behind the passenger!

[gabe]

My wife's step father has a vintage Piper Cub. These are fun planes. It'll run on av gas or pump gas. It's neat that the pilot sits behind the passenger!

It's definitely a bonus. If we crash the passenger gets smashed and covered in gas from the gas tank up front and the pilot gets to bail out of the back. It's a lose/win situation.

Carp, now it's my turn to be jealous. Marty has a damn fine little Super Cub there. 35" tires, big tailwheel, and the best paint scheme Mr. Piper ever thought up. She's a beaut!

[DavidBoren]

The best paint scheme he thought up? Lol. The Cub only came in Cub Yellow... that's why it's called Cub Yellow (and not Yellow Chrome).

And don't pay any mind to my eagerness to tinker... I can spend other people's money for them like it's going out of style. Lol.

I didn't realize that changing the gas tank would change the vehicle designation... can't be swapping VIN's, or whatever the FAA equivalent is. I knew that the gas tank was moved at some point, and therefore thought that it was a modification that would be backwards compatible.

Sounds like you have a pretty good prop on there... which is good because they are expensive and likely near impossible to ship. I imagine that a brush plane favors climb more than cruise, given the unpredictable nature of your "runways". I don't know what affects, if any, larger tires will have on a nice middle ground all-around prop like your current 71/42. That sounds like a good prop, but again, I am no expert. 80mph is probably fine for something that only weighs 800#. It's hard to trust things that you can stab a screwdriver through by accident...

Very cool little plane. Should be a lot of fun. Just be smart.

[Deltasteve]

Throw caution to the wind and DO A FLIP. I dunno why everyone wants you to be so careful.

/s

Sweet plane. I keep thinking about getting my PPL fixed wing, I have a commercial rotor wing but the helo industry is severely lacking in decent paying jobs so I am not using it. I do miss flying but the house is the current money pit, my wife would literally stab me if I bought a plane.

[Axel]

Fun story: my grandfather once showed me his logbook of training hours from pilot training in a Piper Cub (I don't know which model, exactly). He was stationed on Formosa (Taiwan) with the Army in the late fifties as a MAAG (Google it if you care). He took pilot training in his off hours, and logged exactly two flights before the Piper was stolen by a Nationalist who used it to defect to Communist China, thus ending my grandfather's aviary aspirations.

...I gotta find that logbook

[Carp]

I googled my way to wiki.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mili...Advisory_Group

[gabe]

Sounds like you have a pretty good prop on there... which is good because they are expensive and likely near impossible to ship. I imagine that a brush plane favors climb more than cruise, given the unpredictable nature of your "runways". I don't know what affects, if any, larger tires will have on a nice middle ground all-around prop like your current 71/42. That sounds like a good prop, but again, I am no expert. 80mph is probably fine for something that only weighs 800#. It's hard to trust things that you can stab a screwdriver through by accident...

Very cool little plane. Should be a lot of fun. Just be smart.

Props arent too bad to ship because Alaskans go through a lot of them so we have a shop up here that specializes in props so they keep them in stock locally. And yeah, you're right, the current prop is pretty decent. Wood/carbon props are lighter and can be a bit smoother as well as free up some ponies just by having less rotating mass but the aluminum props are generally a more efficient airfoil shape because the material can be thinner for the same strength and as a huge bonus you can clean up nicks/dings in aluminum props with a file whereas wood/carbon props are pretty much toast if you get nicks in them. Doing off-airport stuff you occasionally end up running through tall brush and grass with the prop and in the winter through deep snow so the blades get pretty chewed up.

Axel, that's a great story. I have to wonder where that little cub is now. Probably in the Chinese government inventory as a trainer with a big red star slapped over the poor little cub logo on the tail! Definitely try and find that logbook, it's very neat to be able to go through that sort of history and see someone's story from years ago. When my dad passed away me and my brother went through his logbook which stretched back to the early 90's and had logged every flight that we went on with our dad. It was pretty fun to remember all those trips fishing, hunting, or just going to the cabin to hang out.