Legend Cub

A Legend Cub.

The other day (Monday, January 28th, 2013) I received a catalog from Sporty’s Pilot Shop of Batavia, Ohio.
Sporty’s Pilot Shop sells accessories and paraphernalia to pilots and would-be pilots.
Why I continue to get their catalog after all these years I don’t know.
I order from them hardly ever, perhaps a tee-shirt or two over the past 10 years; one fairly recently.
I suppose they got me from the AOPA mailing-list (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), which I joined in the late ‘70s, so I could get their gorgeous decal to put in the rear window of my 1972 Chevrolet Vega-GT.

That Vega was long-ago junked; it fell apart. But to my mind it was one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. My ability to do mechanical work was enhanced by that Vega. I did various improvements to it, and was always rewarded.
Every year Sporty’s holds a sweepstakes. Purchase something and you’re automatically entered to win a new airplane, usually some Cessna aimed at the private aviation crowd.
But I noticed this time they were giving away a so-called “Legend Cub.” It looked like the famous J-3 Piper-Cub first flown in 1938.

An actual J-3 Cub.

WHAT?
Is someone actually making a J-3 Cub? Is it Piper?
The J-3 Cub that started private aviation?
It’s the Piper-Cub, but it’s being built by Legend.
It’s powered by a 100-horsepower Continental engine.
As I recall, the J-3 was originally powered by a 40-horsepower Lycoming engine — although other engines of higher horsepower came to be used.
Well, it’s a gorgeous airplane, and significant (although the J-3 followed the J-1 and J-2).
It was manufactured in Lock Haven, PA, and I think Piper is no longer based in Lock Haven.
If I’m right, I think the old Piper Lock Haven facility is now a museum (to the Piper heritage), and Piper is now based in Florida, building megabuck aircraft for the super-rich, and also fairly inexpensive low-wing trainers. (The Cub is high-wing.)
The Cub was supposed to be the beginning of getting Ma and Pa out of their cars into airplanes.
Well, sort of.......
Actually it was the beginning of private aviation.
The Cub was so basic and affordable, it’s kind of the Model-T Ford of private aviation.

TriPacer.

Piper’s TriPacer, a tricycle landing-geared Pacer (a tail-dragger, like the Cub), was the attempt to get Ma and Pa out of their cars.
Being a tail-dragger you don’t land or taxi a Cub like a car.
Landing and taxiing weren’t the same angle-of-attack as flying.
The TriPacer, with its tricycle landing-gear, landed and taxied the same as it flew; making it more like a car.
If I am correct, the TriPacer integrated its steering to be like a car.
It had rudder-pedals, but you didn’t need ‘em.
In an airplane the control-tiller was often a wheel. With the Cub it was a vertical stick.
That tiller activated the ailerons, banking the airplane. You had to bank to turn.
Your rudder helped the plane turn. Rudder-pedals activated the airplane’s rudder.
With a car you just crank the steering-wheel.
The TriPacer, in an attempt to be more like a car, integrated rudder-function with the tiller, which was a wheel to be like a car.
This supposedly made flying more attractive to Ma and Pa.
But I wonder how car-like you can get, when you also have to fly up and down?
The tiller-wheel also activated the horizontal elevator. Forward equaled down, and back equaled up. —With the Cub it was forward or back on the control-stick.
The Cub only seated two in tandem. The TriPacer could hold four, although I’m sure there was a weight-limit.
In a car you aren’t obsessed with a weight-limit. Overload a car and it doesn’t drop out of the sky (become inoperable). A car just rides lower, and rides like it’s overloaded.
My first-ever flight was in a TriPacer back in 1956. The pilot was the owner of the airport, also a Piper franchise. I flew copilot; and the guy let me fly the plane.
I was 12, and thrilled.
I noticed the pilot was doing things that would have buffaloed Ma and Pa. He was trimming the airplane so it flew level. He also lowered the flaps on landing-approach.
A lot more was involved than in just driving a car.
Ma and Pa would be over-their-heads.
As soon as we took off he changed the pitch of the propeller. You could do that with a TriPacer, but not with a Cub. The TriPacer had a variable-pitch propeller. He changed the pitch to maximize fuel-usage. Challenge Ma and Pa with that!
Despite my best efforts, the plane kept climbing. I was flying level, but from 1,000 feet we slowly climbed to 1,200 feet.
I noticed the airport’s Super-Cub trainer, a J-3 with a more powerful engine, doing intentional tailspins below us. Someone was trying to earn his pilot’s license. (You could tailspin a Cub and recover without drama.)
My pilot had me approach the runway (a grass strip), but then he landed the airplane.
My younger brother, who once had his pilot’s license, and was part-owner of a Piper Cherokee, tells me landing is the most frightening adventure in flying.
A car is much more friendly.
-A) If it cripples, it doesn’t just drop out of the sky and kill its occupants. You head for the shoulder and call Triple-A.
-B) With a car you pretty-much look straight ahead to avoid accidents. With an airplane you have to look all around to avoid hitting your fellow flyers.
The level of intellectual involvement with flying is much higher than driving.
Then too, keeping airplanes separated became much more involved. Individual involvement of the pilot was not enough. An extensive navigational system had to be instituted. Its goal was to keep planes apart. If they hit each other, they’d disintegrate and drop out of the sky killing the occupants.
Also, things had to be avoided: radio- and water-towers, wires, mountains, and other airplanes. Things you just drove around with your car.
For 16 & 1/2 years I drove transit-bus. I’m a railfan, and people wondered why I wasn’t driving train.
“Because with a bus it’s mainly me,” I’d say. “With a train I gotta depend on others to avoid accidents. Trains all use the same track; with a bus I can just steer around threats.”
Plus a bus can stop much better than a train. With a bus you might be able to stop in less than 300 feet (a football-field) from 60 mph. A train might need a mile or two. It has the momentum of the heavy train pushing it, plus the contact-patch for each wheel is about the size of a postage-stamp, steel-wheel on steel-rail. Traction is almost non-existent. (Slam on the brakes, and the train slides.)
So now the classic J-3 Piper-Cub is being built by American Legend Aircraft Company.
124,900 smackaroos, brand-new. HOLY MACKEREL! For that kind of money I could purchase a pretty-good used Ferrari.
And it ain’t really the J-3 Cub, although pretty much it is.
It has modern avionics, stuff only dreamed about back in 1939.
Back then your location wasn’t pinpointed by satellite GPS.
And of course it ain’t fast. It’s just cool; kind of like how hotrods are cool.
And it’s an antique design. More recent airplanes are more up-to-date, and probably cost a fortune too.
But almost $125,000? For cryin’ out loud!
Do I enter the sweepstakes? I think not; I haven’t yet.
What do I do with an airplane other than sell it?
And for that kind of money I’d like it to haul ass. I’d prefer a modern airplane.