Where are you taking your Cub

[Mickel]

Lake Barkley, Kentucky


Near Kentucky Dam


Near Poplar Bluff, Missouri


Black River & Corning, Arkansas

[CV60]

Landed at Louisiana Regional (L38) after flying around the Bayou country. Trip is here: https://mutleyshangar.com/forum/index.p ... /#comments

[Mickel]

In search of Clark Downtown. Fortunately, following the waterway basically puts me in the circuit. And Heidi has the audacity to ask if this a date. Bit busy for that...




Might be here a day or two waiting out the weather.

[Hook]

Cold Bay to Dutch Harbor. An uneventful flight in absolutely gorgeous weather: ceiling 3000 broken, visibility 75 miles, 25 knot tailwind. It doesn't get much better than this. Certainly better than a previous Beaver flight in the Aleutians where the crosswinds knocked me way off course and the visibility was so bad I ended up landing at the wrong airport. This can only happen if you aren't using a GPS or the Cub map.

I had some doubts about the landing at Dutch Harbor. Crosswind about 45 degrees, 18 gusting to 29 knots. Probably the first time I ever landed there that I didn't have to circle to land. Lots of right rudder, left aileron, slipped right in for an almost perfect touchdown. I was pleasantly surprised.

One Cub flight into Dutch Harbor the wind was directly across the runway at 40 knots. So I did the obvious thing: I landed across the runway. "Shortest runway I've ever seen but look how *wide* it is!" That was actually a good landing and I never went off the runway.

Return flight back up the Aleutians to the mainland will be different: 25 knot headwinds will keep my legs to under 100 nautical miles. Fun with the Piper Cub.

My stock terrain isn't nearly as nice as the screen shots people are posting. If you've ever flown in stock Alaska you know what it looks like anyway.

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I left Dutch Harbor and flew to False Pass (PAKF/KFP). Similar to previous flight, nice weather, but the 25 knot tailwind was now a headwind. That's about 125 nautical miles. The problem is, with that headwind I'm right at the limits of my endurance.

Two hours into the flight I calculated my ground speed at 36 knots. I still had 51 nautical miles to go. I pulled out my mechanical E6-B (which got quite a workout on this flight), put the Rate index on the circular slide on 36 on the frame, looked at 51 on the frame and read halfway between 1:20 and 1:30 on the inner scale on the slide. That meant 3:25 flying time total on the 12 gallons. I was sweating it but landed with 8% of my fuel remaining. And, sure enough, the flying time was 3:25. The logbook said 3.6 hours total for the flight. That 8% would have given me about 15 more minutes of engine time.

I was running 2000 RPM, 70 mph indicated, 2000 feet. That's about 30% fuel use per hour typically and produces a zero degree angle of attack which should be fuel efficient.

I have the aluminum ASA E6-B (check on Amazon) and consider it an essential tool for the serious flyer. You don't have to worry about batteries going dead in the middle of a flight.

I had a 20 knot crosswind and had a similar problem getting on the runway as I had at SABA. Throttle at idle, full left rudder, lots of right aileron and the plane simply wouldn't descend until it was at the edge of a stall. Bounced hard but didn't break the prop.

More practice is needed.

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[Hook]

I forgot to mention. I just went over the number of hours I have in the Cherokee. The Cherokee was 125.9, the Cub is now 128.0.

The Cherokee has flown from Central America to the Galapagos to Quito, down the Orinoco river and back to Texas. It's got some pretty good range on it. Lots of other flights too.

The Cub has flown from San Diego to New Jersey to Cuba to SABA to Martinique, then an Alaska flight from PASV to Denali to Dutch Harbor. I may end this long flight back in PASV.

Hook

[Mickel]

Two days later at Claremore Regional, near Tulsa:


Next flight will have me nominally half way to Sutton's farm. I'll pass hours in the V4 T-6 and Cherokee in the next five hours. I should run down the Comanche and Connie in V4 by the end of the journey. Most of the planes beyond those tend to have intercontinental ranges and LNAV (and time acceleration for oceanic legs). Not expecting a Cub to catch them.

Have had to dig out the whiz wheel. Major roads are becoming more scarce without lengthy detours, and airports are about to get fewer and further between. Took me a bit of playing around to remember how to use the thing.

[MkIV Hvd]

I forgot to mention. I just went over the number of hours I have in the Cherokee. The Cherokee was 125.9, the Cub is now 128.0.

The Cherokee has flown from Central America to the Galapagos to Quito, down the Orinoco river and back to Texas. It's got some pretty good range on it. Lots of other flights too.

The Cub has flown from San Diego to New Jersey to Cuba to SABA to Martinique, then an Alaska flight from PASV to Denali to Dutch Harbor. I may end this long flight back in PASV.

Hook

Thanks for posting your travelogue! However, in a Cub this is more than a "flight"... more like a career

[Hook]

Thanks for posting your travelogue! However, in a Cub this is more than a "flight"... more like a career

Thanks! I'm glad someone is enjoying these.

There's not much difference between 125 hours in the Cub and 125 hours in the Cherokee except that you'll fly farther in the Cherokee.

Currently 136.7 hours, eventually I'll catch up to the Connie at 200.2 if I don't get tired of flying it before then. Last couple of flights had bad headwinds (35 knots ground speed!) and it was cold! It was -20C the last time I landed. The Cub heater doesn't help much in that case.

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After a few nondescript flights from False Pass, I hit PAOU, PAPH (the only duplicated destination from the trip to Dutch Harbor), PAPN/5NP and 5NK. That's Nelson Lagoon, Port Heiden, Pilot Point and Naknek. Strong headwinds, some crosswind component, variable wind speeds and directions, 15 nm visibility so there wasn't much sightseeing, mostly overcast at 3000 or so. Some reasonably good crosswind landings.

Last flight was to PAIG/IGG Igiugig, quite a pleasant flight. Some scattered clouds. Cold, but the heater was working (unlike last flight) and the cabin was 32 F with an OAT of -7 F. This was straight dead reckoning as there wasn't anything useful as a waypoint.

I expected quartering headwinds from about the north on the 50 mile flight, decided it would take about an hour, give or take 10%. Everything on these flights is an estimate except for ground distance, and you can usually get within 10% of your estimates. Without knowing the precise wind speed or direction, and with SkyVector.com recommending 23 degrees magnetic, I figured I'd fly a heading of 15 degrees and get close, especially since the magnetic variation would be a bit different, I didn't try to measure it. I decided if I was going to miss my destination I'd rather miss it on the left, as I'd pick up a major river going directly to the airport. A reasonably competent pilot can be expected to hit a circle 10% of his flying distance around the destination, and sure enough I would have hit about 5 miles to the left. It wouldn't have mattered as the airport was at a point on a lake that was 20 miles wide; I couldn't have missed the lake even if I was way off and visibility dropped to nothing. I picked up the river which I saw at about the 40 minute mark and followed it to the airport. I landed almost exactly 60 minutes after I took off.

No fuel pump there but I don't need it. Next leg is about another hour and it has fuel. I had decided not to fly straight through as I couldn't be sure I wouldn't be getting 40 knot headwinds, reported by windy.com

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[Hook]

Typical flight to PAIL Iliamna except that the skies were few clouds, very attractive. About 15 mile visibility. About an hour flight, plenty of fuel remaining after not refueling at IGG.

Next leg is to PASV Sparrevohn where the Alaskan flight started. I may do a bit more Far North flying, but I'm about ready for the Caribbean again.

If you should ever want to age your engine prematurely, do a full throttle take off in very cold weather without warming the engine. No, I'd never do this in a normal flight, but I was running some tests and didn't want to wait for the engine to warm up. OAT was -22 C and I saw oil pressure at 80 psi once (according to the tool tip). Don't try this at home, kids. My 17 hour engine dropped from excellent to good in about a half hour of abuse. Next time we back up the log file first.

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PAIL to PASV Sparrevohn.

I took off at dawn, flew north. This would have been a reasonably pleasant flight except that FlightWatch Radio was reporting about 3 mile visibility and ceilings of 800 feet... which is no problem except that the weather was closing in my face: when I got close it was 1.5 mile visibility and 400 feet or less. Well, it's a Cub, you can fly in that weather, and it only affected the area around my destination.

When I planned the flight on SkyVector it didn't look like there were many landmarks to use as checkpoints, but when I was flying there were plenty of small mountains and large lakes I could use. I was even able to use rivers a couple of times, but I only followed a river once. A lot of the hills were confusing as I couldn't correlate what I saw on the chart with what I saw out the window, but enough were prominent that it wasn't too much of a problem.

I was already in the area of poor visibility and low ceilings when I spotted a river running toward PASV. I figured I could do a lot worse than follow it rather then a compass course and it worked out well even though the river was difficult to see. When that river ended at another I was headed in the right direction to hit the airport.

The hills to the right of the airport would have caused some difficulty as I was already skimming both tree tops and cloud bases. I ended up on the wrong side of the hill to the left of the airport. I finally had to check the Shift-5 map to get my exact position which I was hoping to avoid. It looked like I could turn right and get through the hills, but I hit a box canyon with no way to turn around and totally unable to climb over it. I ended up crashing 3 miles from the airport. Well, it was a short walk even if it was mostly uphill in the snow (both ways!). I should have turned back when I realized I was on the wrong side of a hill and gone around it.

The weather is too bad to fly and I don't have any more Alaska destinations in mind, and I'm really ready for more Caribbean experience.

Hook

[MkIV Hvd]

PAIL to PASV Sparrevohn.

I took off at dawn, flew north. This would have been a reasonably pleasant flight except that FlightWatch Radio was reporting about 3 mile visibility and ceilings of 800 feet... which is no problem except that the weather was closing in my face: when I got close it was 1.5 mile visibility and 400 feet or less. Well, it's a Cub, you can fly in that weather, and it only affected the area around my destination.

When I planned the flight on SkyVector it didn't look like there were many landmarks to use as checkpoints, but when I was flying there were plenty of small mountains and large lakes I could use. I was even able to use rivers a couple of times, but I only followed a river once. A lot of the hills were confusing as I couldn't correlate what I saw on the chart with what I saw out the window, but enough were prominent that it wasn't too much of a problem.

I was already in the area of poor visibility and low ceilings when I spotted a river running toward PASV. I figured I could do a lot worse than follow it rather then a compass course and it worked out well even though the river was difficult to see. When that river ended at another I was headed in the right direction to hit the airport.

The hills to the right of the airport would have caused some difficulty as I was already skimming both tree tops and cloud bases. I ended up on the wrong side of the hill to the left of the airport. I finally had to check the Shift-5 map to get my exact position which I was hoping to avoid. It looked like I could turn right and get through the hills, but I hit a box canyon with no way to turn around and totally unable to climb over it. I ended up crashing 3 miles from the airport. Well, it was a short walk even if it was mostly uphill in the snow (both ways!). I should have turned back when I realized I was on the wrong side of a hill and gone around it.

The weather is too bad to fly and I don't have any more Alaska destinations in mind, and I'm really ready for more Caribbean experience.

Hook

WOW...yep...Caribbean seems like it would be a lot more relaxing

[Lewis - A2A]

Ha, smashing shots peoples. Looking and sounding like some fun adventures have been had already. I see the community guys liking it so much that I see they are still all flying on the A2A community discord server now.

cheers,
Lewis - A2A

[Mickel]

Into Texas. New Mexico tomorrow. Almost feel like I'm on the home stretch.

Only I'm not.

Not by a long shot.