One of the weird jobs I had in the olden days, was recovering fabric planes. Air Knockers, Tea carts, and Cubs, almost exclusivley.
We recovered a 1937 J-3 for an old man, who may have bought the plane new. He had something like 60,000 hours, every bit of it in the Cub. He had checked out in about a dozen planes, but after the check ride, he would climb back in the Cub.
Like Jack, he liked the fly low. He would come to the hanger, about every other day to check on his "Baby", and hanger fly awhile.
One phrase that has always personified the old man for me, was"Low and slow". He said it a lot, while he followed me around the plane, as I was doping fabric on the aircraft. I took to refering to him as "Low and Slow".
When we finally got the last coat of that god awful yellow butarate dope on it, and the numbers stenciled on, he was waiting.
When the painted numbers were dry, we pushed the plane out of the hanger, he climbed in. I propped him, and he was on his way.
(For those who may not know, "Propping" is starting an aircraft engine by spinning the prop by hand. The Continental A-65 had no starter. The old man was a widower, and lived alone. He had a grass strip beside his house, and he propped the plane by himself at home, standing beside the plane, beind the prop. That seemed inordinately dangerous to me, but he had done it for many years, and still had both arms.)
We had a pretty good cross wind that day, almost at right angles to the runway, so he took off on the grass beside the runway.
We expected him to fly around the field, and land, and we would figure out how to get both his car and his plane back home for him.
We couldn't see him, but we could hear him. for about a half hour, we could hear him, and not see him.
The single runway ran almost directly North and South, and we had a pretty brisk wind out of the East. The paved runway was in the center of an about 100 yard wide cut through cross timber forest. When he took off, he had leveled off just barely above the trees. We could hear him coming in from the West, but we couldn't see him, and we were getting worried. We came up with implausable reasons why he didn't seem to be moving. (The most reasonable of which, was that he had gotten stuck in a tree, and was trying to rock himself free.)
Finally, after a half hour, we saw him, coming in from the West. Flying at an altitude of about fifty feet, and at a ground speed of about five MPH!
We had a long term parking apron on the West side on the runway, South of the hanger. When he got over the apron, he reduced power, pulled the nose up, and basically hovered down to the pavement. If it had been a modern airplane, the stall alarm would have been screaming! He slowly, and gently, lowered the Cub onto the apron, right over the anchors.
I went out to tie him down, as it was so windy, if he wasn't going to take the plane home, it was in genuine danger of blowing away.
As I approached the plane, he opened the door, and yelled"Low and slow, the only way to go", and asked me to arrange getting his car back home, which I did.
My boss took the old man's car home for him, and I took an Air Knocker Chief over to pick him up. I gave the boss an hour or so head start, and when I landed at the old mans grass strip, they were bending their elbows, with the top of a bottle of Old Grandad.
When we were approaching our own strip, the boss asked if I wanted to try to land like the old man. Not only NO, But Hell NO! Said I!
I side slipped between the trees and the runway, on the upwind side, and landed on the grass at an angle of 30 degrees. (Love grass strips!)
If you hang around a hanger long enough, you will hear of every feat possible with an air craft. Some believable, some may take some effort to believe, But that old man landing a J-3 vertically was the damndest bit of flying I have ever witnessed with my own eyes.
Like someone mentioned in an earlier post, the old man put on that plane like a pair of pants. When he was in it, it was a part of him.
Not long after that, I had to give up flying. It just got too expensive. Rental was twelve dollars an hour wet when I started. When it went to thirty dollars an hour dry, I just couldn't afford it anymore.
My boss offered to sell me the Aeronca Chief for $1,200, and I turned him down. When you're working for three bucks an hour, $1,200 is an enormous amout of money, but I have been kicking myself in the ass for the last 35 years for not buying that plane!
