The Pasture Pilot’s Log

So, after a couple of weeks studying regional jets and airline operations, Pilot_man, Brad and I rode down to Griffin yesterday to pick our way around the boneyard and to pick up a cub which several of my friend own.

I call it the Un-Cub. It has 90 horsepower, a battery, starter and a radio. That big old engine had given some problems and it was in the shop to have a cylinder repaired.

To start with, it’s wintertime here so we were short on daylight to start with. Brad’s flight 11:45 physical didn’t wrap up until 2, so it was nearly 4 when we got to Griffin. I arranged for the shop to push the Cub out, and we dashed for the boneyard.

We had fun. We’re looking at making a bar out of a learjet outer wing panel, some tables out of jet cowls and wheels, and who knows what else. But.. the sun was sinking the whole time. I ran into the office to figure out some prices, and we walked back into the shop to see.. Richard Collins’ P210 being dismantled. The famous aviation writer, whose plane was the centerpiece of many articles, decided to retire his plane, apparently, and wanted nobody else to have it.

Hmm..

Anyway.

Back to the Un-Cub.

We rode back to the ramp, and the mechanics sorta reminded me the sun was outpacing me.. and that they’d burned most of the gas out of the cub. Crap. I did a fast preflight, hopped in, fired it up and taxied to the fuel pump, which is decorated with a handwritten note. “Pump out of service. Use pump by FBO.”

Crap crap.

Taxied to the other pump. It read my card just fine, the pump started but for some reason it won’t dispense fuel.

crap crap crap.

I reset all the switches and whatnot and it worked. Pumped fuel so fast I topped the tank in a few seconds and capped it with a geyser of blue fuel out the top. Got my receipt, put the cap on the tank and hopped in.

The wonderful thing about cubs is they are the bare minimum of what’s required to fly an airplane. Before takeoff checklist? Yeah. Controls free and correct, runup, mag check, carb heat check. Trim to neutral.

No lights, no pumps, no propeller control, no mixture, no bleed air, no APU, no gyros, no autopilot. Other things a cub does not have: Electric trim, hydraulics, flaps, intercoolers, nav radios, retractable gear, or FMS.

I was angry enough at having left my handheld GPS at the room, but I figured Highway 16 would get me home.

We rolled out onto the runway centerline, and I laughed. In the RJ, there’s a whole profile for takeoff: Set power, power set, 80 knots, check, V1, Rotate, Positive rate, gear up, speed mode, nav mode, autopilot on, flaps up, after takeoff checklist.

In a cub, you line up on the runway (Or into the wind if it’s blowing that hard), cobb the throttle and keep her out of the weeds. At forty MPH, we just floated off the runway, and I picked up speed to climb at 60. We were high enough to turn crosswind in the pattern by the time we were halfway down the runway.

It’s 40 miles from Griffin to Whitesburg. As soon as I turned west, the powerplant stacks just a few miles south of the farm caught my eye. No stinking GPS needed here. Not even a map. This is what flying is all about.

I throttled back to 2300 RPM, the airspeed crept up to 90 MPH. The altimeter has one needle, and I think it indicates thousands of feet, with tick marks to give a rough idea of hundreds of feet. I let it hover a little above the 1 and trimmed for cruise. There are three instruments in a Cub I use and trust. Tachometer, oil pressure and the fuel gauge.

The fuel gauge is a bit of wire stuck into cork. It pokes through the cap of the fuel tank, and you gauge how much fuel is left by how much wire sticks out the cap. The only way it can fail is for the cork to become fuel saturated or to fall off the wire, in which case it indicates less fuel than is really on board.

The other gauges are all about the engine.

My eyes, ears and butt tell me most everything else needed to fly a cub. If the airplane is buffetting all over the place, I’m probably too slow. If the door starts to close itself, I’m really too slow. (the door folds down, at high angles of attack, the door swings open, forced by air squeezing between the fuselage and it.) If wind is blowing in through the door, it needs rudder. If wind blows in through the left window, it needs rudder.

Yellow light bathed the cockpit as the sun sank into the southwest. I passed north of Falcon Field, hoping the Pilot Factory students would be able to see the bright yellow box kite floating by. Once past Interstate 85, I eased lower. I followed the landmarks along a route I know well: Barns, ponds, sod farms, dirt roads and then rolling woodland. I didn’t have to descend much to do a low pass when I got to the farm. As I pulled up and to the right, I eased the power in to hold 60 MPH around the turn, and we flew a tight little traffic pattern. On downwind, I chopped the power and pointed the nose at the end of the runway, gliding down to a three-point landing. I added power, taxied to the departure end and looked up. Sure, there’s enough light left for one more. Power up, tail up, stick back, and I’m floating above the trees. Turn left, then right, chop the power, glide to earth again.

It’s a ritual I’ve done since I was a kid, and each time, I still feel like I’m that kid, having a ball in the perfect airplane.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 @ 8:02 am on the category Grassroots Flying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.