New Airplanes

Looks like a Cub, works like a cowboy

Potato cannons pop during the lunch break at Aviat's plant in Afton, Wyoming, two hours by car (40 minutes by Husky) south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. A little flammable spray at one end of a plastic pipe, a potato in the other, a spark from a lantern flint, and boom — another treat for the cows munching grass next door. It's a good deal for the workers and a good deal for the cows. Later, a cowboy moves the herd to the next pasture, his quarter horse wheeling and turning to block the path of an errant calf. Aviat's Husky A-1 tailwheel aircraft can do that too.

Perhaps the fluorescent yellow Husky on the Aviat ramp was watching the cowboy and taking notes, since it is headed for a life of cattle herding in Australia. Most of the 25 Huskies made here each year become worker bees; the majority of those shipped to Europe, for example, are used for glider towing. Some are used in law enforcement. Huskies even come with factory-installed float fittings for operating in the bush country. Many pilots, though, purchase this Piper Cub look-alike for the sheer joy of flying around at a respectable speed with the door down, the right window solidly latched to the wing and the left window slid back, the wind whipping through the cockpit, giving the pilot information about his speed and rudder coordination.

The A-1's FAA designator is CIA-1, which makes Aviat president and Canadian resident Malcolm White a little apprehensive when passing through Canadian Customs aboard his Husky; the border police get very curious. (CIA-1 stands for Christen Industries A-1. Christen Industries was purchased by Aviat in 1991, but the FAA designator hasn't changed.)

The Husky was conceived as an improvement on the Piper Super Cub. Frank Christensen realized his first success in aviation by building the Eagle, essentially a clone of the 200-horsepower Pitts S-2A. The Husky was designed to outperform the Super Cub, especially in short takeoff and landing capability. To accomplish that, the Husky got more wing area; slotted flaps mounted on huge hinges; a constant-speed propeller; spades on the ailerons to reduce aerodynamic forces; and a more powerful, 180-hp engine.

Construction is primarily tube and fabric, but there are important differences from the Cub. Metal surrounds both the engine and the cockpit, to prevent vegetation from tearing fabric when operating in rough areas. The door sill on which the pilot must sit when entering the cockpit looks substantially beefed up compared to that of the Cub. Earlier models, built before Aviat took over the factory, had a reputation for freezing the back-seat passenger's feet; but open areas in the floor have since been closed off, and the heat distribution system has been improved. Customers have their choice of Dacron fabric covered with either dope or the Superflite polyurethane system. The Husky comes from the factory ready for VFR night flight, with such standard items as landing and taxi lights, strobes, and interior lights. The skylight comes standard as well.

The Pitts, Eagle, and Husky are all built by Aviat under the same roof. But is the Husky a better Cub? Flight demonstrations proved it is more like a Helio Courier.

Like the quarter horse, the A-1 knows a lot of tricks. Some of them are hard to believe, considering test flights for this article were conducted from Afton's 6,200-foot-elevation runway with its 7,000-foot-msl pattern altitude. During a flight to Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyoming, 60 nautical miles north, we easily topped the peaks along our path at 10,800 feet and drifted to 12,800 feet for a look at the park's tallest peak. If the Husky can make it here, it can make it anywhere.

One of those tricks included a short-field takeoff with the stick back and flaps set at a full 30 degrees (they add more lift than drag). Aviat owner White and I loaded the airplane to nearly gross weight, but we lifted off in 200 feet at 43 KIAS. The pilot operating handbook says the airplane isn't supposed to do that well, but it did. The next test was the takeoff at Jackson Hole Airport near Jackson, where the field elevation is 6,445 feet. With White as my witness, I swear the Husky climbed those first 600 feet at 1,500 feet per minute. Above 7,000 feet msl, the climb rate settled at 700 to 900 feet per minute.

Another indication of climb performance came during a photo shoot when we were flying at 48 knots just above the runway. The Husky had enough power to chandelle to downwind in order to return quickly for another pass, despite the fact that I had been joined in the cockpit by Aviat chief engineer David Pilkington, who had calculated that we were at gross weight.

The low-level maneuvering brought to mind the experience of the U.S. Border Patrol a few years ago. The Border Patrol bought a fleet of Huskies but sold them after two low-altitude accidents. They were using the aircraft to follow human footprints from 50 feet agl. When officers lost sight of the footprints, they would jam on the power, make a 270-degree turn, and return to the exact location where wake turbulence still churned. In two cases this maneuver ended in a stall and crash, one of them fatal. "We had some pilots at the time with little fixed-wing experience," one Border Patrol officer recalled.

The FAA concluded that any aircraft flown in a similar manner would also stall. In fact, the Border Patrol had similar mishaps with Piper Cubs it had used prior to buying the Huskies. The Border Patrol sold its fixed-wing aircraft in favor of helicopters — perhaps the machine it should have used all along. Aware of the circumstances of the accident, I put the Husky in slow flight at 48 knots indicated and flew hands-off through the aircraft's own wake turbulence. The Husky made a slight left turn and flew on. Later flights showed stalls to be nonevents. The airworthiness directive history shows no serious problems, although some years ago there was a problem with front-seat backs breaking; they are used by rear passengers to enter and exit the aircraft.

As another testimony to the aircraft's stability, White said the federal predator control folks shoot running coyotes from it. They hit 'em, too. Perhaps the best test of maneuverability, although not at slow speeds, came as White directed me down the Snake River's twisting canyon on the flight from Jackson to Alpine, Wyoming, just north of Afton. The locals use it as a VFR airway in low overcast conditions. In only a few places is it wide enough to safely operate three aircraft abreast. The Husky responded quickly to pilot inputs, as it must in such tight quarters.

"The ground is supposed to be below you, and it took time getting used to seeing it above the aircraft," White said.

While it does well at slow flight, it is no slouch in cruise. Flights with White were throttled back to 18 inches manifold pressure and 2,350 rpm, yet we had a GPS-verified true airspeed of 112 knots at 7,500 feet (that's low-level flight in this part of the country).

Landing proved less predictable, but a patient Pilkington coached me until I made a greaser after a dozen tries spread over four flights. I generally came in a few knots too fast and, more important, flared too high. "At this altitude, you have to get everything just right," Pilkington said. The secret was to get the aircraft as low to the runway as possible and to keep the book- published airspeed for the flap setting used — 50 knots, in this case. (The airspeed indicator is in miles per hour.)

As Sparky Imeson, a resident of Jackson, notes in his book Mountain Flying, the most important aspects of high-altitude landings are airspeed control and knowing your aircraft's sink rate characteristics at higher altitudes. Aviat officials said that part of the problem was my flight experience in a Bellanca Decathlon tailwheel aircraft.

"Decathlon pilots seem to flare eight to 12 inches too high in the Husky," one official told me. I was flaring more like 20 inches too high and later found I was not alone; most new owners seem to need two or three hours of landing practice, according to another Aviat official. Some pilots have reported that it is difficult to get the tail down when flying solo (which is done from the front seat), but I always had someone in the back and therefore never experienced the problem.

At first, the spring-loaded trim system received some of the blame for my two-bouncer landings. An internal spring bungee system raises or lowers the entire elevator, a design resulting from changes in FAA flutter-control requirements. What I didn't know was that the trim was slightly out of adjustment. When the indicator was all the way aft and I stopped turning the trim wheel, there was still considerably more nose-up trim remaining that later proved helpful in lightening stick forces during the landing. Until the problem was discovered, pulling the stick back the final few inches for landing was like a workout on an exercise machine — good for the biceps but bad for the ego.

After four flights I greased the Husky onto the runway and called an abrupt halt to landing practice, wanting to end on a good one and allowing Pilkington to return to his primary job of designing a new aerobatic Husky, due to debut later this year. The new craft will undoubtedly benefit from Pilkington's considerable experience in competitive aerobatics in his native Australia and in the United States.

The present Husky offers Pilkington an impressive design as a starting point, and that applies to creature comforts as well. While I would have liked to slide the seat back an inch, I was never uncomfortable. The wet compass seems a bit awkward to use, placed as it is — 45 degrees above the pilot's forehead. Wingroot-mounted fuel gauges are read by looking back over the left and right shoulders; reading them caused unintended left and right stick movement. They can be read accurately only in level flight.

One of the aircraft's strong points is that taxiing with the steerable tailwheel can easily be done by low-time pilots, which speaks volumes about the Husky's usefulness as a trainer. One word of caution to new students: The brakes are industrial strength, aimed at stopping the optional oversize wheels some pilots use for operations in rough terrain. Don't press the brakes unless you mean it.

Overall, the Husky is well-built and able to takes years of pounding. Yet it has smooth control harmony that allows the pilot to read a map or take a photograph from the window without worrying about changes in heading and altitude. Pilots will enjoy having this trick pony in their stable.