In case you hadn’t heard, this is the Year of the Cub…the 75th anniversary celebration of that wonderful proto-LSA, the Piper J3 Cub.
Of course, I’m excusing my post on the FAA-certified J3 here because it is also legal to fly as a Sport Pilot, along with many other venerable Golden Age flivvers. I fly one now and then at my local strip at Great Barrington airport in western Mass. Yes, I’m totally biased…Cub Love is not quite like any other aviation love. For many of us, it’s like going to Lourdes to commune with the Virgin Mary…or Yankee Stadium to commune with The Babe.
All aircraft have their special places in our hearts. But was there ever anything quite like the wonderful Cub? If you haven’t had the pleasure, take some dual just to see what our forebears learned to fly in. You’ll not only gain appreciation for how much better your stick-and-rudder skills could be, but it will, I’ll wager, also infuse your soul with a real bit of love for flying, true grassroots Americana style. There just isn’t anything quite like the sensation of lifting off behind a Continental four-banger of varying horsepower (the one I rent is a Continental with 65 ponies) and struggling at a leisurely pace for altitude.
Wikipedia has a tasty lead-off to its abstract that I want to share with you: it cuts through the flowery verbosity to capture in unadorned prose the essence of what the Cub has meant to generations of pilots:
ThePiper J-3 Cubis a small, simple, light aircraft that was built between 1937 and 1947 byPiper Aircraft. With tandem (fore and aft) seating, it was intended for flight training but became one of the most popular and best-known light aircraft of all time. The Cub’s simplicity, affordability and popularity invokes comparisons to theFord Model Tautomobile.
The aircraft’s standardchrome yellowpaint has come to be known as “Cub Yellow” or “Lock Haven Yellow”
As my pics, shot a couple winters ago, no doubt betray, there’s nothing in aviation
that unlocks a loving glow in my innards more than the sight of that immortal Cub Yellow on a golden-hours afternoon. There is no other color quite like Cub Yellow.
EAA has put out a call to all J3 Cub owners to fly in to the big airshow later this month. There will be a big fly in to Wittman Field and prominent events including a zillion of them parked at the Antique section on the show grounds.
And if you see someone putting their chin up against that wonderful Cub Yellow and making a wish, like we did as kids with buttercup flowers, please say hello: that’ll be me, unabashedly indulging my own version of Cub Love.
