On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 7:33:33 AM UTC-7, Ashevilliot wrote:
On Thursday, August 10, 2017 at 8:16:45 PM UTC-4, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:57:18 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, August 9, 2017 at 7:13:57 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 9 Aug 2017 17:19:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/9/2017 2:28 PM, Ashevilliot wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2017 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Doug Landau wrote:

Anybody can fly an aeroplane, alright?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i415QwSj0Og&t=43s

Excellent. That's a great airplane, a Beech 18, I think. If you're gonna crash, that's a great airplane to crash in because of its monocoque construction its stresses are in the skin.

Go to 4:33. Bikes and planes work better when you add lightness.

Here's another great "tricked" Cub which won the shortest landing roll, Valdez, AK at just a little
over 10'. Empty weight on that delicate little thing is 800 lbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7-BuNiP6Y
Very impressive. I wonder what its normal airspeed is (or would be with
full covering of the fuselage). And what sort of weather it may be
limited to. Any idea?

The Piper J-3 was built in a number of versions with engines ranging
from 40 to 65 hp. Catalog listed empty weight was 765 lbs, with the 65
hp engine. Cruising speed for the 65 hp version was stated to be 75
mph.

My father belonged to a flying club that owned a J-3, I believe with
the 40 hp engine, and a steam train could out run it is there was any
wind at all.

They were a bit rudimentary. No brakes and the fuel gauge was a float
attached to a wire that stuck up through the fuel tank cap :-)

That's a great fuel gauge and still successful. All you have to do is replace the cork (which sometimes gets saturated) with a hollow brass float from a Ford carburetor. The brass float has a countersunk bead around it so that it's easy to attach the wire.

--

And people wonder why I would never get in a private aircraft.

You just don't know what you've been missing.


Actually the no brakes thing worked out pretty well on the grass strip
that the flying club used. To taxi took, maybe, half throttle to get
moving and if you went back to idle the thing stopped moving :-)

It sounds like this aircraft did not have a tailwheel, that it had a tailskid which acted like a brake with the stick pulled all the way back.


The wire on a float fuel gauge wasn't fool proof so most people would
just push down on the wire before cranking the engine and if it didn't
pop back up to it's original position they'd take the cap off and peer
in to see how much fuel they had. Here is a photo looking forward
showing the fuel gauge.
http://tinyurl.com/y9k8u8yj

--
Cheers,

John B.

http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/pistons/piper-cub

About 20,000 Cubs were manufactured up through 1947. When I was growing up they were everywhere and you could buy one for $1k. Now you can't find one for less than $40k, and a nice one is 50 to 60k.

I guess I'll shut up now and go take a bike ride. Thanks for the conversation.

What is sort of comical is that I've never flown a private aircraft but military regulations were that you always had to have two men on the controls of military aircraft so when the Aircraft Commander had to take a leak I would sit at the controls of a B52. The pilot even took it off of autopilot and let me fly it.