On meeting the Champ

I have a passion for the Piper J-3 Cub, but it's been getting awfully difficult this summer to book time on Zero Six Hotel, the 1946 Cub that I have been renting for the past several years. (An hour at a time, I should  add.) Hampton Airfield used to have a rental fleet consisting of Zero Six Hotel, plus a wartime lookalike that once served the Massachusetts National Guard as a liaison aircraft, plus a modern update called the Legend Cub. But the last two each suffered a "hard landing," as the euphemism goes. The L-4 is still being rebuilt. The Legend has been nicely restored, but the owners wisely decided not to put it out for rental any more.

J-3 Cubs in good condition are hard to come by, and they are correspondingly expensive. (As an indicator of how much better Cubs have fared than the U.S. dollar, Zero Six Hotel went out the door in August 1946 for $2600. Today we are required to carry $60,000 insurance in order to rent it.) So the airport settled instead on a 1948 Aeronca Champ.

I held out for a while, but yesterday I got Bill Rose (those are his shapely legs beneath the door of the Champ) to check me out in Seven Five Echo. The fact that the Champ's engine could levitate me, Bill, and 18 gallons of fuel on a muggy day is proof that it has virtues unknown to the Cub. Its flaws are also real, especially those hydraulic landing-gear struts. On my second takeoff, I lifted the tail so as to roll down the runway on the two main wheels, whereupon the plane began to toss itself like Sancho Panza in the blanket: oopah, oopah, oopah! It will be a while before I essay a wheel landing in the Champ. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford