Presentation - flying a Cub across the US

In this interactive presentation, member Mark Sanford will discuss his insights from flying a Piper Cub across the US, with a focus on trip planning. The discussion is very open to students and anyone interested in thinking through the adventure of flying a small aircraft on a great trip.

Let's discuss the challenges and possible preparations involved in planning to fly a Piper Cub named Walter across the country in winter!

This will be an interactive meeting where we look at various issues and discuss how you would address them and of course Mark will share what was on his list. The goal is to come up with new and better items for next time and to discover the joy of flight planning.

Here's the scenario for our discussion:

In mid summer, we bought a pretty little Piper Cub but he's all the way across the county. We've had a new engine installed and now, mid November, Walter's ready so it's time to bring him home.

Let's plan what it takes to fly a stock 1947 PA-11 Piper Cub Special with a new C90 engine from Chino CA (CNO) to Ithaca NY in December. Given the plane and crazy time of year, how are we going to make this trip work safely while having fun?

Just to set the stage, Cubs are cloth covered, have no starter, in fact no electrical system, lights etc. at all!

Some of the discussion items -

• Starting out, how do you make the purchase decision? - supporters
  
• Where to put him once home and how might we get him home?
  
• Not the same as heavier/faster aircraft - wind, conditions, what performance considerations might there be?
  
• Planning, the details - how do we avoid dropping details?
  
• What personal rules and minimums
  
• How about some discipline & daily goals? What personal minimums should we set?
  
• Safety - what can we do to stay safe, and from what? Let's think through the hazards and fun ways to minimize them.
  
• Prepare ourselves - How do we get mentally prepared for such an overwhelming adventure
  
• We are preparing to fly (very exposed) through territory that we've never seen before - places that can be outright hostile and scary to a Cub - how do you psych yourself up before a 2600 mile trip?
  
• What should we bring with us on the trip?
  
• Equipment - what should we have - what extras might be fun and useful?
  
• If we want any equipment - when and how should we install it - what problems might this pose?
  
• How do we power this equipment?
  
• What else would we want with us to make it easier and more fun?
  
• Figure everything in advance or update daily? - You could plot everything on charts like a AAA TripTik or you could hop in the plane and head east - what should we do?
  
• Staying up on the weather - how?
  
• Route of flight - how do we figure it out - When to plan it out and what tools would should we use?
  
• Routing constraints - how do we plot the route and what do we have to watch out for?
  
• Which airports en-route, how do we figure this out - There are a lot of airports out there right, or are there? How would we decide where we're landing, what rules would you have and what things might you find?
  
• Where are you going to stay each night? Food?
  
• Special things to see along the way?
  
• What-if issues like getting home if bad weather, breakdowns - what sorts of adventures can spiral off this trip and how would we prepare ahead of time?
  
• Rinker Buck book - scary?
  
• What amazing things were found along the way?
  

What else? Bring some ideas and let's see what we discover!