JPANN

My friend had just completed the repairs on his cub this past week, all in all it looked good. He spent many hours re-covering and pin striping as well as tediously repairing the fuse fractures etc. The plane balanced good left to right and front to back and all of the mechanicals were in good working order. We listened to all of the advise from you fine folks regarding the toe in and everything else.

I had finaly agreed (after reading the test pilot disclaimer as described above) to take off for him as this seemed to be where he had most of his problems. Now, you must now before I go on with the story at hand that in between my last installment and this one he had fixed the airplane once and taken it out to where an old timer or two ( I mean that in a good way) fly and proceeded to crash on take off and neither off them had any real answers as to why. It has taken a very long time to get to this point as we have been routinley grounded due to the blasted wind around here, I swear at least 20 mph every stinking day!! This morning was perfect, not dead calm but very slow lazy wind with no gusts. I looked at my friend he just gives me the thumbs up with a big grin on his face. I ask again if he is sure he wants me to crash I mean fly his plane. "hell yes I do" he says as if he knows the outcome already. Its cold, maybe 40 deg. and I am shaking already from nerves so the cold does not help matters. Already dressed like an eskimo I put gloves on but I take them off because I can't be one with the radio while wearing gloves. The engine does not want to start as easy as usual my hands are going numb and as I am looking at the other end of the runway the cub goes past me! "what the heck, I was not ready for my bud to let go, too late now give it lots of gas! It gets off the ground, at this point there are about 15 people looking on which does not help either, you can hear a pin drop as everyone holds there breath. The cub is going up, left, and right all at the same time and it is a real handfull just to keep her in the air. Something is wrong and I am not sure just what the plane is just a nightmare to fly and I am in over my head. I get it about two mistakes high and somewhat level for now but continues to be a bear. I hear "JP, do you want me to trim it for you?" I can't answer because I am fixated on the airplane and its lack of respect for the pilot, as well as realizing that trimming it out will do nothing for it since it is mostly doing whatever it wants to. I am not flying this thing at all, more like just moving every control surface opposite just to keep it in the air. Finaly I just blurt out "this thing is $%@#$& up! I need to bring it down. I try to get it back on approach but it just keeps rolling over, I save it three or four times just to do it all over again. Eventualy from all of the barrel rolls it is too low to the ground and it dissapears behind some trees and I can't hear the engine anymore. Knowing the carnage is at its max, we head out into the wilderness and find it in MANY pcs. right next to a crater big enough to think a meteor had hit there. So all in all the plane was the only loss, bat and rec is good as well as all but one servo. The engine outside of some dirt on and in it looks like it never hit the ground at all.

Even though I gave the pilot disclaimer speach, I have purchased a new airplane for him. He was not happy that I did and at this moment swears I will not pay for it (even though it is adone deal!) He was happy that it was not pilot error the half dozen times he crashed. I just did not want him to get bummed out and stop flying so I crashed today and purchased a new one for him today.

Thanks for the shoulder, and happy flying.