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Projects		 Coyotes, Cubs and Skywagons
Sometimes it seems, airplanes are just another machine that takes us from here to there.  Maybe its speed, and its gift of freedom to ignore the roads and fly straight across the land is the reason we spend our money to have the machine there in the hangar… ready when we are… but to me at least, it’s more than that.  That 180, Cub or Champ sitting there, quiet, promises to lift my spirits with just the turn of a prop, and show me things I would never otherwise see.  After nearly thirty thousand hours in the air, you would think I’d get over it…

Every once in a while, I think about the day when someone will come along to look over the machine that has been my freedom, sit down in my seat, start the engine I’ve worked on, and trusted, and climb away over the hills.  I spent a few hours with those thoughts Saturday, as I flew west over southern Montana, watching the shadow of a PA11 Cub sweeping along over the sage and rocks and rivers below, and thinking about the airplane’s owner… watching and listening as the airplane his dad had rebuilt years before, and both of them flew, became a speck against the sky, and then disappeared over the horizon.

In addition to his skills as a rodeo cowboy and hunter, the old man must have been a resourceful mechanic. He rebuilt the Cub to suit his needs, and when he had the idea for a better Coyote hunter, he built it… using parts from a 1938 Talorcraft, really long wings, and a hundred eighty horsepower. On skis in the winter, and wheels the rest of the time, they hunted coyotes, and made good use of the airplanes in big country where a hundred miles in an hour doesn’t change the scenery much. I would like to have met him, to hear his stories about the Cub, and the homebuilt, hunting in Alaska, and life in southeast Montana… but he’s been gone since 1998, and I just got glimpses of his life in the logs of the Cub, the notes he wrote about the rebuild and modification, and in the eyes of his son as I got ready to take the little airplane and head west.

I had laid awake in Bozeman the night before we flew out to bring the Cub home...worrying whether the mice had chewed the rib stitching, or someone had used tractor oil in the engine...or worse.  I hadn’t met the owner, and it’s easy to let imagination conjure up images of an airplane that’s been in the barn for a while.  I had a ferry permit in my pocket, because the Cub was "a little" out of annual.  But when we pulled the airplane out of it’s hangar and into the warm sunshine, close inspection quickly put my fears to rest.   The O235 came to life, and inspection showed it to be an airplane that had earned its keep, but also one that had been loved.  I put my A&P number in the log, signing it off as safe to ferry, then flew it around the ranch strip a couple of times...partly to check it out, and partly for the young man who's physical ailments have conspired, for now, to keep him from the sky.

My friend John flew high cover for me in his 185 as we headed out over the land of the Crow, and the Cheyenne, and the country where General Custer eventually "found" Crazy Horse and the Oglala Sioux at the Little Bighorn. We made our way out over the Powder, the Tongue, the Bighorn and joined the Yellowstone, which took us most of the way “home” to Bozeman pass, and Gallatin Field. You don’t need much navigation gear when you fly a Cub…the only “moving map” was the sectional that kept sliding off my lap, doing it’s best to escape out the open door. It would have been no great loss, with the Beartooth and Absaroka ranges on the left, the Crazies and the Bridgers on the right, road signs to let me know how far we had to go, and eighteen wheelers to judge the groundspeed by.

Watching from the open side of the airplane as the shadow slid along a couple hundred feet below made me think about what a precious freedom we have... and about how fragile that freedom can be.            
By Mike Todd

posted 5/7/06


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