Day 7: The Super Cub Pilot

Gary Bishop & I
Originally uploaded by sasnook.

At the crack of dawn I found myself amazingly awake. I knew that today I would fly in a Super Cub. Bill and I had come back down to Anchorage and stayed with Ron and Mary Ann in Anchorage, two close friends of his that took good care of me. We drove up to Palmer to meet Gary Bishop.

Gary is a good friend of both Bill and his son Paul and they arranged this amazing opportunity for me. One of the pictures Bill gave me long ago, that I have never parted with was a picture of a runway that was quickly made so that Gary and his super cub could get Bill back to civilization. But this runway did not look like a runway at all…it looked like a swamp. This is a typical place for Gary to place his little cub. I quickly learned that Gary began his career in aviation in Oklahoma as a crop duster in a super cub and as a beginning pilot was given the opportunity to fly from New York to England to deliver a Cessna 172 with his flight instructor. He now lives on a beautiful little private airstrip outside of Palmer and runs a Part 135 operation.

Gary willingly took me up and showed me everything that a Piper Super Cub could do. We began with steep turns, using the bars as visual reference on the horizon, which was a 60-degree bank turn. He then showed me the advantages of vortex generators and how the cub, as long as it was coordinated would not have the abrupt stall characteristics that most airplanes have and it just oscillates. We then continued on and saw many moose and landed on a few gravel bars and a mountain. There is almost nowhere you can’t put a cub down as long as you are aware of what the wind is doing. As we took off from the mountain, it was sloped down hill and we had a tail wind all of a sudden we ran out of runway and dropped off a cliff about 30 feet and nosed the airplane over to gain airspeed and off we flew through the crevice of the mountains. There is so much more to this flight, but all I can say is anyone that has any interest in aviation should fly in a Super Cub some day.

Once on the ground, Gary told Bill and I a number of aviation stories over a cup of coffee. My favorite was when Gary had experienced 40 knot winds, stepped on the brakes and applied full power and just after the tail of the aircraft had lifted off the ground the cub without moving an inch lifted off the ground and flew.

Unfortunately, it had come time for Bill and I to part ways. He is remaining Alaska for a few more days and I must return to Florida to complete my multi-commercial and begin CFI ground. I already miss traveling with Bill and look forward to meeting up with him and Jojo in the Twin Cities some time soon. As for Alaska, I know that I will be back, hopefully to fly a beaver on floats in Kodiak.