Safety Spotlight: Ode to the Super Cub

It reclines casually on its back wheel, comfortable in its distinctive yellow color that doesn’t seem right on any other airplane. The joyful hue is a welcome contrast to the dark news often encircling us during this pandemic.

Most temperate days, I head out to the hangar a few hundred feet from our eerily quiet offices at headquarters and lunch with N517WC, which spends most of its time locked in solitary confinement. I imagine that 7WC is always happy to see me and wonders why I was gone so long. What could possibly keep me from the awesomeness it is always poised to reveal? Like an attentive dog, waiting at home, the Super Cub waits for the hangar door to open and our next adventure to begin. I sit with it, sometimes re-reading the scant owner’s manual, sometimes preening its fabric, and make promises I won’t keep about all the upgrades it will get. No one is around. No mask necessary. Social isolation with this thing that brings so much joy, even when caged.

Airborne, I’m inspired by the views it reveals, which extend endlessly and keep feeding my windscreen, like the repeating reels scrolling by car windows in old movies. Only this view extends 360 degrees around me and changes, constantly, for as long as I fly. The simplicity of a Super Cub affords a lot of time to admire and ponder. Eyes don’t need to be in the cockpit much; there’s not much there to check that can’t be affirmed by outside visual and aural clues. The more complex jets I used to fly are stunning performers, but they were divas, demanding to be the center of attention. They were proud for me to see the dials and digits they flaunted like expensive jewelry, and they insisted that I attended to them frequently. The surrounding scenery was but a setting to emphasize their impressive performance.

My Super Cub, on the other hand, shuns the spotlight, preferring to cast attention outward on the drama it exposes. It demands patience. It will take me anywhere; I just need time and a patient disposition to soak in what it uncovers. The Super Cub’s tandem seating indulges the refuge I seek in flying. I’m embarrassingly selfish in the cockpit and have no serious desire to change that—in part because I’m at my best flying solo, a serendipitous trait during a pandemic. I’ve never fully adapted to a crew of any kind flying with me. I don’t like explaining my decisions or announcing my actions. I forget to delay just a second as common courtesy to advise someone to clear for a flight control check, or that I’m closing a window or changing a fuel tank. I resent the implied obligation to entertain someone within six inches of me. Perhaps years of solo flying in the U.S. Air Force tainted my acceptance of someone else encroaching on my cockpit sanctum.

I usually fly at 500 to 1,000 feet above the ground, following valleys and surfing ridges. I’m a nuisance to air traffic control on flight following when I am that low, moving in and out of radar coverage, so I rarely talk to ATC. ADS-B and satellite weather offer exceptional situational awareness on weather, traffic, and obstacles that I never had flying the divas. I listen to music and go long periods near a meditative state, absorbing the splendor. I’m sure people in other hobbies find this experience in different ways, but I don’t know how. How do they match the combination of perspective, the natural beauty in this world made accessible to pilots by demanding skills developed over years? Skills that allow pilots to harness one of the most dangerous forces in the natural world, gravity.

Quietly, in the subconscious, these skills—once so hard to master—now come with ease and seem as natural as walking. There’s an inexpressible feeling of satisfaction and pride in that realization, and a level of amazement. An underlying recognition that it is all so precarious, really. Or could be, save for the knowledge and skill I’ve built. The Super Cub has no ability to overcome gravity without me, and it will dutifully follow my commands, even to our mutual doom. Defying the natural order can come crashing down, literally, if my skills or decisions balancing this complex equation of flight go amiss.

So, I realize that is my charge. To maintain knowledge and skills, fly it often enough to remain proficient, and proceed more cautiously when I’m not. It won’t get all the upgrades I promise, but I must maintain it to be reliable. Then I can continue to defy the natural order, seek more adventure, and dream up more exploits for when this pandemic is grounded.

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