Iwas walking down the flight line at our local airport, returning from the FBO to my hangar, when I came across a brand-new-looking Cessna 180 with the owner busily polishing. With the sunlight sparkling off the fuselage, I could not help but stop and very impolitely stare at the airplane. I found the owner (Tom) to be an old acquaintance, a fellow former corporate pilot and businessman who had previously owned various turbine aircraft, including a Citation.
Tom’s Cessna 180 was pristine, and we talked about the effort and expense required to bring it to that condition. After a while, I could not help but ask if he missed flying all the fancy, pressurized aircraft he previously owned, most of which I was quite familiar having flown them myself. To my surprise, he said, “No, not at all.” He went on to say at age 72, having flown everything else in earlier years, the simplicity of flying this fixed-gear taildragger in nice sunny VFR weather is exactly what suits his fancy. So much so, he said, that he has spent an outrageous amount of money on this 180. He so enjoys the simple, minimal stress form of flying that he could never see replacing it.
This got me thinking about what has been the most relaxed flying I have done over the past 50 years and 11,000 hours. The first flights that came to my mind were in a 65-horsepower Piper Cub, devoid of any electrical system or radios. In my late teens and early 20s, I flew the Cub all over south Florida for $3 per hour while building time for higher ratings. After having someone help prop the airplane to start, and with the doors always open, I would wander off over the Everglades and Florida Keys below 1,000 feet just exploring wherever the little airplane wanted to take me. With the doors open, there was a slight smell of exhaust, but that was generally overcome by the salt marsh smell from the Everglades and farm fields just 200 to 300 feet below.
There was no flight plan or time schedule in the Cub. No controllers I had to talk to or altimeters that needed to be reset at FL180. No passengers asking where the coffee creamer was and expecting to be somewhere distant at a precise time regardless of weather. The only determiner of how long the flight in the Cub would last was the bent wire sticking out of the gas cap just in front of the windshield that was attached to a cork in the gas tank. When the wire was down to the last inch or so, it was time to look for a place to land. At that time, filling up with 80 octane gas rarely cost more than $1.25 per gallon. Ah, the freedom and simplicity.
Some years went by, and I slowly moved onto more complex and faster aircraft, some owned by me, others owned by various corporations for which I flew professionally. But as time passed, just like my friend Tom, I found a desire to return to
simple flying.
To a certain extent, helicopters can provide this. They fly low and slow and almost always VFR. For more than a decade, I owned and flew an R44 from Alaska to California at or below 1,000 feet, landing wherever it looked attractive. With time, however, I realized as enjoyable as this was, it was not the same as the old Piper Cub. The main difference is the mechanical complexity and noise level of the helicopter. There are many moving parts over your head and behind you in a helicopter, and they all have to work perfectly for the flight to be successful. This starts to play on your thinking after a while. A preflight in a helicopter is not an activity to be done quickly or taken lightly.
Interestingly, the activity of restoring a very simple, single-engine, fixed-gear, piston-powered, 40-year-old Cessna to essentially new condition was a very satisfying experience.”
Helicopters also have a series of limitations you get accustomed to after a while, but they still detract from the simple joy of flying. For example, in helicopters, there is something called the “height/velocity” envelop, also quite appropriately known as the “dead man’s” corner. This is an area starting at about 20 feet above the ground up through about 100 feet, in which hovering or flying slowly (say below 60 knots) is quite dangerous. If the engine quits from that low altitude without sufficient forward speed, there is not enough energy in the rotating rotor system to cushion the touchdown that inevitably follows. The outcome is sort of like stalling an airplane at 50 feet above the ground.
So after flying helicopters until I satisfied that itch, I started to think about other types of flying that were truly relaxed and casual. What also came to my mind was the float flying I had done some 30 to 40 years ago. After getting my float rating back in my 20s, I spent several hundred hours instructing in those airplanes. Most often the instructional flights were in underpowered Taylor Craft. But they at least had electrical systems and starters, so we didn’t need to balance ourselves out on the end of the float, hand-propping the machine from behind the propeller.
The freedom to land on the water pretty much anywhere we wanted impressed me almost as much as flying over the Everglades in the Cub five years before. A couple of decades later, when I was living in a big house on a large lake and no longer dirt-poor, I decided (like several of my neighbors) that having a float plane tied to the dock in front of the house would be a magical thing to do. So I bought a Cessna 185 on Edo floats and spent 10 years flying it throughout the Northwest and into Canada, all VFR and generally below 1,000 feet. With time I found the only problem with this was getting fuel.
In the Seattle area at the time, there were only two places where you could fuel a float plane. One was in Kenmore at the north end of Lake Washington, the other at Renton, at the far south end of the lake. Now, the lake I lived on happened to be 30 to 50 miles north of those locations, and deadheading down there to get fuel before departing on a northbound trip got to be kind of old. I started looking for a set of amphibious floats to fix this problem, but other life events intervened, and we wound up moving off the lake before I could pursue that. The other tricky thing I remember about flying floats was trying to dock the airplane in a tight spot when the wind was blowing without embarrassing myself. Traditionally, float planes (unless turbine) do not have brakes or reverse thrust…this can make for some tense moments.
Then there passed a period where I personally owned several different multi-engine airplanes, the last being a Cessna 340, which we flew most often in the low flight levels IFR all over the continent. I also returned to flying professionally, but nearly always in turbine aircraft, often Lears and Citations. This was interesting, but from FL450 at night, you really don’t see much, and the pressurized cabin smells like whatever the passengers in the back are drinking. Not at all like the Everglades just 200 feet below in the Piper Cub. Ah, for the simpler days.
So, while still owning the C340 and the R44, I started thinking about buying a simpler aircraft. I looked closely at Carbon Cubs, but now with eight grandkids, the two-place cockpit seemed inadequate. That led me to a Cessna 180 or 185 search. I eventually found and bought one late last year, promptly sending it to Upland Aviation in Chilliwack, BC, for a “complete makeover” as they say in the cosmetics business. The process turned out to be fraught with frustration and delay, but that is another story. Also, not wanting to completely submerge in the bath of “simplicity,” I had Lawrence Liu of Trilogy Avionics remove the instrument panel in order to replace all the instruments with glass and install a new Garmin autopilot. During a visit, Lawrence proudly displayed the new panel cut out for me…strangely only two round holes.
Interestingly, the activity of restoring a very simple, single-engine, fixed-gear, piston-powered, 40-year-old Cessna to essentially new condition was a very satisfying experience. So much so that I found all my airplane time now involved messing around with the 180, so I sold the 340. And truthfully, just like Tom, I have not missed the flight level pressurized flying much at all. My thinking is surprisingly similar to many retired airline pilots: “If you want me to do that kind of flying, then I will need to get paid.”
The next thing I did in pursuit of simplicity was drive out to Priest River, Idaho, and visit Tom Hamilton’s Aerocet aircraft float factory. They have a bunch of very skilled and enthusiastic fiberglass float builders out there who do excellent work. After looking their product over and recalling the problems I had getting fuel for my old C185 on floats, I ordered a set of the 3500 model amphibs. They are currently sitting on their four wheels waiting to be attached to the C180.
The bottom of the fiberglass floats is slick as it can be, which results in a great reluctance of the airplane to slow down on the water once power is reduced. Remembering this problem from my old C185 on straight Edo, even with all the rivet heads sticking out of the bottoms, I ordered a reversible MT propeller which is also waiting to be installed. Slick floats notwithstanding, all my encounters with the dock should be very gentle.
Now, this may not entirely match the simplicity of my Piper Cub days over the Everglades or flying underpowered Taylor Crafts on floats. But, on the other hand, I will not have to hand prop the C180, I will be able to stop the airplane as it rushes up to the dock, and at least four or five of my grandkids can fit inside. Maybe there is such a thing as too much of a return to simplicity. I will let you know.
