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Our "New" Cub - Updated with pictures/reports from the trip home

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Hodakaguy

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We'll be finally bought a cub. It's a 1938 Cub "Sport" with a mighty Cont A50-3 Engine. It was restored by Clyde Smith Jr (The restoration is one of the best I have seen, Clyde does Great work!) Our goal is to keep it as original/correct as possible, in the same spirit that Clyde restored it.

Can't wait to start flying to some airshows this summer and enjoying this beautiful cub. Anyways I'm pretty exited to pick it up this week, figured I would post up a couple pics (I see there are a few pics of this plane in the gallery all ready).

I hope to be a regular here on this site.....it's great!




A50-3 Up Exhaust Dry Sump Engine




Taken a couple weeks ago during the purchase inspection/annual.




Interior.

Here is a link to a Video Clip of the A50 Engine Start up. With dual exhaust and no mufflers this little engine has a sound of its own. Pure Music....The camera makes the prop look really wild when its running. You can click on HD to watch it in High Def.

Link here: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QF-V1wjXc[/ame]






UPDATE: Trip Report...The ride home ;D

The purchase of the cub came with an extra Cont A-50 engine (wet sump, the one on the plane is a dry sump) so we needed to pick up the engine as well. My uncle Mike came with us so he could drive the engine back to WA state while we flew home in the cub. Having the van on the trip would come in real handy later on. We arrived in Sonoma CA on May 8th to pick up the plane. After doing all the necessary paperwork, talking to the owner Ron and the mechanic Eric Presten (Eric has produced several aviation books, we purchased his latest one and its great!, Highly Recommended! CLICK HERE: http://www.napanet.net/~arbeau/usaah/vf.htm). ect we were fueled up and ready to head to our next stop, Willows CA.



Here we just rolled the cub out of Ron's hanger. No the plane isn't electric, the extension cord is charging a hidden gel cell battery under the rear seat. There is a hidden intercom system under the front seat that is powered by the rechargeable gel cell. Turns out the battery was bad from sitting and lasted almost to the end of the taxi way. Oh well, cubs are great with no radios!




Here we just loaded up the spare engine into the van.




Sitting on the grass at Sonoma CA. Had to take this shot with the cool BD-5 weather vane in the background.




Group Shot. Starting from the left. Myself (Tom), my father Dan, Mechanic Eric, and Owner Ron




We left Sonoma and Eric followed us out for a ways. He wanted to get some pictures of the Cub in the air for his next book. Can't wait to see the pics.




Here I'm flying from the back, we are heading twords I-5 where we will turn north. Felt good to get back over ground where you could land pending a engine out.




You can just see Colusa airport in the distance. Our new destination and our temporary home for a day and a half.

Once we hit the valley and turned north we ran into strong headwinds. The forecast was for calm winds up the valley but they got this one wrong. Our GPS was showing a ground speed of 27mph - 35mph with an indicated airspeed of 65mph. Not what we really wanted for our first landing in the cub. Mike was giving me updates on the ground up ahead and it didn't look good, strong wind. Looking at our time and our fuel it was obvious we wouln't make Willows like we had planned. We decided to land at Colusa CA instead and wait out the wind. My father brought the cub in for a great landing and we tied the plane up for the day. My Uncle picked us up in the van and we headed into town for some lunch.

I did a mag check again while we were taxing to the tie down area and it had a slight miss on the left mag. Also we had a couple minor oil leaks to take care of. (The plane has been doing a lot of sitting for the last couple years). Once back at the airport I found a few loose hose clamps, and a couple loose wires from the mag switches. We met a real nice fellow pilot by the name of Ray that loaned us some of his tools and we had the oil leaks taken care of pretty quick. We didn't have a plug wrench though so it was back to town again in the van to get some more tools. The van came in real handy here as we made more than a few trips into town and back.

A quick call to Eric to talk over the rough mag problem and we were back working on the plane. I swapped all the plugs top to bottom on each cyl. We started it up and it still had a mag drop and miss but this time it was on the other mag. At least we now knew that it was a plug and not a mag. There is no where to buy plugs here so we drove down to the end of the runway where a Duster outfit is operating off the field. I talked to the owner and asked him if he had a serviceable plug I could use to bounce around cyl to cyl on the A50 to find the bad plug. Turns out he had Brand New plugs and said here have one. I asked him what he would charge me for a set of 8 new plugs since I didn't know how old the others were and he just handed me 7 more! I tried to give him something for them but he said nope, just have them. Then he proceeded to give me a bottle of thread lubricant as well! I really wish I had gotten his name....anyways another big thanks to him!

At this time it was getting late so we left the plane tied down and headed back to the motel for the night.




Here is a shot of Ray and I. Ray was a great help to us at Colusa, making many trips to his hanger and back to bring us tools ect. He used to own a bicycle shop in town and still does work on them at his hanger. Ray had a beautiful Sonex in his hanger that he had built, the best looking Sonex that I've seen! Ray will have his Sonex at the Arlington Air Show in WA this year, see you there Ray.




Ray's Sonex that he built. Absolutely Beautiful!
 

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