{"id":1185,"date":"2010-11-23T08:10:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T13:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeclarksblog.wordpress.com\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2011-06-24T16:09:08","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T20:09:08","slug":"the-perfect-flying-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/?p=1185","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Flying Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Piper Cub takeoff<\/p><\/div>\n

Every time an airplane makes the news, someone makes a comment about the \u201cPiper Cub.\u201d Now the airplane might have been a Cessna 210, a Beechcraft A-36, maybe even a King Air, but for many in the public, if the aircraft is smaller than a Boeing 700 series airliner, it is a \u201cPiper Cub.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

So many people are ignorant of the Piper Cub. The airplane is a wonderful machine which has trained hundreds of thousands, if not a million pilots how to fly over the decades since its inception. There is no way to truly tell, no one kept numbers the way we record them today.<\/p>\n

The Piper Cub actually started life as the Taylor E-2 Cub in the early 1930s.\u00a0 Clarence Gilbert Taylor was the designer of the Taylor E-2. Taylor was a self-educated aeronautical engineer from Nottingham, England.\u00a0 He and his brother, Gordon, formed the Taylor Brothers Aircraft Corporation in Rochester, NY in 1926.\u00a0 When Gordon died in 1928 during the test flight of a new aircraft design, Clarence moved the company to Bradford, PA.<\/p>\n

It was in Bradford where Taylor created his E-2 model.\u00a0 William T. Piper became one of the predominant investors in the new airplane and the company.\u00a0 When Taylor was ill and absent from the company, Piper directed one of the other junior engineers to modify the E-2 in an attempt to make it more attractive and more marketable.\u00a0 This led to a rift between Piper and Taylor resulting in Piper buying out Taylor who then left the company.<\/p>\n

The E-2 then became the J-2 and with further improvements, eventually the airplane became known worldwide as the Piper J-3 Cub.\u00a0 Originally powered by a Continental A-40 engine, other larger Continental engines soon replaced the smaller engine.\u00a0 The most common engine application in the airplane is the Continental A-65 engine of 65 horsepower.<\/p>\n

In all, Piper built almost 20,000 Cubs between 1938 and 1947. As a result of a popularity of the aircraft, it is no wonder with such a high market share, most Americans believed all airplanes were Piper Cubs.<\/p>\n

The Cub turned out to be the perfect training aircraft.\u00a0 The airplane was economical to operate, easy to fly, and easy to maintain.\u00a0 Spare parts were plentiful and the A-65 engine was the most common light airplane engine of the era.<\/p>\n

In flight, the airplane could fly at a top speed of almost 85 mph.\u00a0 With a cruise RPM setting of 2100, Piper J-3s had a cruise airspeed of 75 mph with a fuel flow of less than 4.5 gallons per hour.\u00a0 While the airplane was not going to go anywhere fast, it had other traits which made up for its lack of speed.<\/p>\n

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We don' nee' no stinkin' rhoonway<\/p><\/div>\n

With a gross weight of 1220 pounds, the stall speed was less than 40 mph.\u00a0 This gave the airplane a very short takeoff and landing distance.\u00a0 Additionally, the airplane was incredibly forgiving; power-off and power-on stalls were very straightforward and the design of the airplane lends itself to very good stability.<\/p>\n

The best thing about flying Piper Cubs is being able to fly with the left window slid completely open and the right window snapped in place underneath the wing with the door of the aircraft wide open.<\/p>\n

One can truly enjoy flying in such a perfect flying machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

-30-<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2010 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time an airplane makes the news, someone makes a comment about the \u201cPiper Cub.\u201d Now the airplane might have been a Cessna 210, a Beechcraft A-36, maybe even a King Air, but for many in the public, if the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6],"tags":[329,633,685,713,829,879,977,978,1468,2006,2088,2155,2807,3396,3439,3477,3478,3815,3573,4023,4279],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-aviation-history","category-flying-2","tag-airplanes","tag-beechcraft-a-36","tag-boeing-700-series-airliner","tag-bradford-pa","tag-cessna-210","tag-clarence-gilbert-taylor","tag-continental-a-40-engine","tag-continental-a-65-engine","tag-flying","tag-j-2-cub","tag-king-air","tag-learning-to-fly","tag-piper-j-3-cub","tag-student-pilots","tag-taildraggers","tag-taylor-brothers-aircraft-corporation","tag-taylor-e-2-cub","tag-the-perfect-flying-machine","tag-the-piper-cub","tag-training-aircraft","tag-william-t-piper"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3372,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions\/3372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}