Page 6 - Nov22T

Back to Simplicity
by Kevin Ware
Iwas walking down the f light 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 cor- porate 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, pres- surized aircraft he previously owned, most of which I was quite familiar having f lown them myself. To my
4 • TWIN & TURBINE / November 2022
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 weath- er 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 f lights that came to my mind were in a 65-horse- power Piper Cub, devoid of any elec- trical 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 be- low 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 gener- ally 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 dis- tant 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