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It’s with great sadness that I got informed of the death of Shaun Lunt. Shaun was representing a different breed of pilots, flying SuperCubs over Alaska, and reporting on the beauty of this region on his blog. Shaun was as gifted for aviation as for photography, both domains lost a talented person.

Shaun got killed in the crash of his SuperCub, south of Quinhagak. I did not knew him personally, but I immensely appreciated his work. Shaun’s flying is probably as far as possible from the kind of flying I do, showing how varied aviation is.

My thoughts go to Shaun’s friends and relatives, particularly to Loni Habersetzer who was flying together with Shaun in his own SuperCub. Seeing a friend going down is probably the hardest thing a pilot can have to face up with.

Shaun left us, and flew west, beyond fog, but we will never forget him, nor what he teached us.

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Category: Memorial Section
Tags: accident Alaska Shaun Lunt SuperCub

This is the time before the next flight I planned in a light aircraft. This will be the longer interruption in my flying activities ever. Before starting training for my IFR, I went through a shorter non-flying period, to put enough money aside.

We have been living in Frankfurt area for one month now, and thing get settled slowly. We feel more and more “at home”, but budget-wise it’s too soon for flying. My priority is still to keep my ratings alive. So I need 12 hours after the 5th of August 2008.

The plan now is to go to both London and Geneva. We’ll drive to Geneva to see family and friends, and then fly out of there to London, thus taking benefit of EasyJet prices. The flying part of the trip will be at both West London Aero Club (WLAC) and Geneva Aeroclub.

There is no exact planning for London right now. The fleet there is varied, ranging from Piper SuperCub to Piper Saratoga. Flying a Saratoga over England sounds tempting, and given the number of airfields in the London area, this could be the opportunity to realize the 12 Airports Project, but in a different region. For budget and objective, the Saratoga is may be not the best plane: it flies fast, so flies less, and is not exactly cheap.

A SuperCub familiarization - first tail-wheel for me - also sounds tempting. The White-Waltham grass is perfect for that, and it seems possible to pack it within the time we’ll spend there. Another variant could be simply flying around London in a PA28.

The Geneva part is more easy. The club recently received a DA40 TDI with G1000, so I’ll profit from it. It will probably be a mixture of VFR and IFR, and I’ll try to bring G1000 photos for the blog, possibly with the terrain page when flying in the Alps. I don’t know if this G1000 will already be retrofitted with the Synthetic Vision System… that would be a dream.

As always when making plans with short and fixed time frame, I now have to cross fingers for having good weather. August shall not be that bad, but if you could cross fingers as well for me, I’ll appreciate that !

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Category: Pilots Talk
Tags: DA40 G1000 Geneva project Saratoga SuperCub White Waltham WLAC

In a recent post, I mentioned the exceptional descent performance of the Pilatus Porter. One could say a lot on the Porter’s performances, but it’s not the sole aircraft with outstanding characteristics.

I had the chance to fly a couple of times as passenger in a PA18 SuperCub. This improved version of the Cub is not flying exactly fast, but its take-off and climb performance are… well… unusual.

This video has been taken while taking-off from Geneva runway 05 grass. The displaced threshold (marked with inverted V and a bar across the runway) is 180 meters from runway begin.

Using the same runway with a Cessna 172 or a Saratoga make the trees look impressively close on initial climb. But with the SuperCub one harly notices trees in the axis ! The rest of the climb is also rather impressive. This plane is also able to make rapid descents in side-slips, and is fitted with skis for glacier landings.It time and money allows for, a tail-wheel training could be the next on my list…

UPDATE (24-05-08): This is now an higher resolution of the same video, hosted by revver.com.

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Category: Pilots Talk, Video Gallery
Tags: climb performance SuperCub take-off Video