Video: Super Cub Pilot Needs Mere Feet to Take Off
KNIK RIVER, Alaska – Unlike other places where speed may dominate pilot discussions, up here it’s all about how slow you can go. It’s directly related to how quickly you can get off the ground and how little room you need to land.
It’s called STOL, or “short take-off and landing,” and here in Alaska it is synonymous with flying.
This weekend pilots from throughout Alaska and across North America will converge on the coastal town of Valdez for the annual Fly-In & Air Show. The big event is Saturday’s STOL competition.
A typical pilot in a small single-engine airplane might use 1,000 or 1,500 feet to land on a paved runway, bush pilots often need just a few hundred feet. Sometimes less, because most of the time bush pilots aren’t landing on a runway or anything resembling one.
At the STOL competition in Valdez, takeoffs and landings are measured in tens of feet. Pilots pull up to a line and try to get off the ground with as little ground roll as possible. They also try to touch down as soon as they pass a line on the ground in the shortest possible distance.
For many years Alaskan bush pilots with thousands of hours of flight time in Piper Super Cubs and similar planes have dominated the competition. But this year a teenager who isn’t even Alaskan could give them a run for the money. Cooler still, Bobby Breeden is a student pilot.
“I’m taking five AP classes and haven’t had the time yet,” the teen from Virginia says, explaining why he hasn’t got a license. “I just turned 17 a few weeks ago.”
Breeden isn’t like most student pilots. He says he has more than 200 hours in his logbook and 99 percent of it is in Super Cubs. That’s not a lot of experience by Alaskan standards, but he’s excited to compete. His secret weapon is a custom Super Cub built from the ground up to be competitive in Valdez. In a sign of just how serious Breeden is, there’s a measuring wheel in the back of the airplane for practice sessions. He’s got a physics textbook back there, too.
“I’ve been practicing for Valdez, I got signed off for it and everything,” Breeden says, referring to a signature from his flight instructor. Such a signature is required to fly solo as a student, not to compete in a STOL competition.
The airplane he and his dad built has numerous modifications to dramatically improve the performance. If practice sessions on gravel bars along the Knik River northwest of Anchorage are any indicator (video above), Breeden and his custom Super Cub will be very competitive.
The massive 35-inch tires are inflated to less than 3 psi to absorb the impact of landing on rocks and other debris. They also give the wing a high angle of attack to aid in decreasing the takeoff and landing distances. The engine has been stroked out an additional 15 cubic inches (375 total) and puts out around 210 horsepower. To help balance the heavier engine, the composite propeller weighs just 14 pounds. The result is helicopter-like performance.
“It’s just full power with the brakes locked and you get the tail up,” Breeden says, “you just rotate immediately as you release the brakes and it just lifts off the ground.”
Of course, if there’s one thing every bush pilot knows it’s that experience usually counts for more than a fancy airplane. And there will be many pilots in Valdez with as much experience flying Super Cubs as Breeden has with breathing. It should be an exciting weekend.
The competition gets underway Saturday afternoon and we’ll have a full report with more video and the results on Monday.
The only girpe I have with the article is the statement about single engine aircrafts needing 1,000 to 1,500 feet of runway to land. Clearly the author has never been up in a single engine aircraft.
