Piper Super Cub 180

By Andrew Herd (14 September 2001)

he first aircraft I ever flew in was a Piper Cub. The year was 1965 and I was six, and it all happened at Denham Aerodrome in North London, where dad flew Tiger Moths for the magnificently piratical and now sadly missed Tony Cheshire. Tony had three Moths and they were as much fun as you could have with your trousers on. Dad wouldn't take me up in one in case I fell out, or so he said, and I had to make do with flights in a Cub, a Chipmunk and a Dragon Rapide instead. The Chipmunk and the Rapide are only dim memories, but I will never forget that Cub; it smelt like a old tennis shoe and it was so small that we kind of put it on, rather than getting in.

The Piper J3 first saw the light of day in the 1938 and it was so successful that 'Cub' became a generic name for all light planes. Piper had just moved its plant to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, after a disastrous fire and William T. Piper, a former oilman, took the opportunity to launch the new design, equipped with either a 40 hp Continental, Lycoming or Franklin engine, for $1,300. The aircraft was advanced for its day, featuring almost unknown comforts like a tail wheel, brakes and a rubber starter shock chord. Taking a lead from Henry Ford, all J3 Cubs were yellow, whether you liked it or not, and by the time production stopped in 1947, 14,125 Cubs of all descriptions had been built, making it one of the most successful aircraft of all time.

Several J3s are available for Flight Simulator - the Abacus Premier Collection Cub, for $12, the freeware 'Red Cub' (redcub.zip) and 'Blue Cub' (bluecub.zip) by Bob Wening and Yannick Lavigne, which are appealing, but beginning to show their age, and the FlightSim Developers' J3 Cub (piprj3mm.zip) which would still be the definitive Cub, had not the same team have gone out and improved on it.

The new FSD International Super Cub is available as a download from here, to anyone wants to invest $15, which given the quality of the package, should be just about anyone with an interest in general aviation. The file is 8.8 Mb and the automatic installation takes up 21 Mb of disk space. After installation, documentation is available in ...\FS2000\aircraft\FSDcub\manual\ in the form of an html file, but there is no link to this from the start menu. A check list is included, which is adequate, but gives few clues about engine management - it would have been nice to have seen something in there about RPM and manifold pressures.

Manuel Medel, who designed the visual model, told me that he has been fascinated by the Cub since he was a kid, 'Since then I have built the Cub in various ways and different sizes including plastic models, free-flight models powered by rubber bands, a radio controlled model, and as a Flight Simulator model.' Manuel's first Cub, for FS98 (piperjm.zip) was a great deal less sophisticated, 'At that time the tools and resources available to FS designers did not allow me to reach the standard I wanted. About three years ago I made my first J-3 model for FS, and at that time the model approached the limit of what those tools allowed us to do. FSFS and FSFW95 imposed a lot of limitations on what really could be done.'

Talking about the original FSD J3 project, Manuel told me, 'It had to be totally rebuilt to exploit the possibilities that FS2000 offered. The techniques we use today and consider to be relatively easy weren't easy at all two years ago. For example, with FSDS we can make a really good cowling or a detailed pilot's head in just a couple of hours, whereas with AF99 and SCASM we're talking a couple of days.'

Part of the fun of designing the first FSD J3 was working in such a talented team, 'To me, that has been the most rewarding part of the project. I think that if I hadn't been a part of the FSD group I really would have given up on it,' Manuel said. 'It has been a team effort in which each member has pulled together - not just by doing their best work but by always keeping a great team spirit. Maintaining that harmonious atmosphere on a long-term project such as this has been is absolutely essential. We all (and myself in particular) should say "Thanks" to talented authors such as Manfred Moldenhauer, Martin Wright, Paul Surgeon, Takuya Murakmi, Trevor Stiger and many others who have not only created excellent tools, but who have shared them with us all, making it possible to develop our hobby further each day.'

By now, if there are any readers left who have managed to resist the siren call of a classy freeware Cub, I am duty bound to inform you that you owe it to yourself to spend fifteen bucks on a much better payware one. If you don't do this, I can tell you that you will feel unhappy for the rest of the week, and hair will possibly grow on the backs of your hands. Trust me, I am a doctor.

I have got to say that I really, really like the FSD J3. It has travelled with me from PC to PC, and I have a great deal of affection for it. But I guess I ain't gonna be flying it that much any more, because the new Super Cub is so much better. The aircraft itself is about as yellow as a Cub should be, with transparent cockpit windows and a detailed interior, including the lovely Ms Chika. If this is the future for virtual pilots, it looks an interesting one, and she even turns her head with the rudder pedals. In fact, I would go so far as to say that she is the best virtual pilot I have seen, and that is nothing to do with her immaculately modelled pony tail, though part of me says she has the potential to become the Lara Croft of flight simulation. The majority of virtual pilots are so badly executed that they would be better left out, and I still remember the moment I looked round in an airliner sim a few months back, only to discover that there was a mummy from 'Return of the Living Dead' sitting in the right hand seat. Other commercial designers please take note of this lady. And incidentally, before I get any more emails about it, yes, Super Cubs do solo from the front seat!

Enough already - onto the plane. The textures are about as crisp as you can get, with modelling of oil leaks, wear and grime streaking on the wings, but the general effect is of a plane that had a wash down sometime this past week. There isn't any bleed-through that I can see, all the control surfaces move and the visual model detail is very fine indeed - get close enough to the prop and you can even read the makers' name.

There is plenty of animation, including rotating wheels, ailerons and flaps that move in the external views and the cockpit door flips down if you press the slash key. Even the engine is a 3D model, although you can't see it properly unless you zoom right in so that the cowling disappears, and if you do that, you will also notice that Ms. Chika is complete right down to her trainers. I'll confess I did not look inside the wings to see if the cable runs were there, but I wouldn't put it past these guys to have included them.

Thanks to some clever programming by FSD, the external cockpit views load almost instantly, which gives this sim the distinction of being the first FS2000 visual model I have seen with functional external views in 2D mode and the under-wing views are exceptionally realistic. This is an area where many otherwise excellent products fall down, due to insufficent attention being paid to textures - yet users who fly any number of circuits will spend a lot of time staring at these graphics. It is good to see it done right for a change, and the loading speed means that it is a pleasure to do VFR. The virtual cockpit is extremely classy, with moving control surfaces and all, though sadly Ms. Chika seems to have vacated the front seat.

The panel has a nice vintage feel to it, with some of the most beautiful gauges I have seen to date, riveted into the black hammerite finish of the plain dashboard. The one thing about it that isn't absolutely perfect is the lack of any cowling in the forward view. This particular Super Cub is fitted with a constant speed prop, so in addition to the primary flight instruments, you get a manifold pressure gauge - managing the prop RPM lends a bit of interest to what would otherwise be a very simple cockpit layout. The only other extras are an ADF and a NAV1 radio. Essentially, what you are looking at is a bush aircraft, and according to Steve Small, who did the flight dynamics, 'The aircraft is designed to be very basic. We decided to leave the comms radio out by design, as the North American continent is littered with navaids, but mostly uncontrolled airports.'

Firing the engine up and taxiing it brought the first of many surprises. The Super Cub is a taildragger and you can take all the usual comments on this as read; but what immediately got my attention was the reserves of power that the sim has on tap. When I emailed Steve about this, he responded, 'The SC180 is a very powerful aircraft: it has 180 Hp in an airframe that was originally designed for far less, the basic airframe in the J3 is much the same and it shipped originally with 58 Hp. The specs say it all - airborne in 250 feet. It climbs like anything. The current 180 is remanufactured by a company called "Cub Crafters" which is the performance profile I used for this plane.'

So that is why the sim bounds forward - 180 Hp in an airframe lighter than a C152 - which has an anaemic 100 to 120 Hp!

The flight model, by Steve Small, reflects his usual attention to detail, and is a showcase for his understanding of flight dynamics. The penalty for flying a tail-dragger is that there is no forward view until you get a bit of speed up, but on the other hand, the take off and landing runs are short and sweet, though you have to watch a tendency to float down the runway in the ground effect, if you don't chop the power on cue, which I gather is how it should be.

The J3 didn't break any records and a quick one was flat out at 87 mph, but the Super Cub could cruise at 112 mph and did a dizzy 123 mph with the throttle wide open, despite a dry weight 200 pounds greater than the earlier model. The extra power is reflected very well in the air file, which captures the bubbly feel of the original very well. Stalls are very polite, maybe too much so, due to FS2000's limitations, and I couldn't actually get it to spin, though I did manage a stomach-churning wing drop by standing the plane on its tail and crossing the controls. Fun to fly, and no tricks to it; a beginner would have no problems at all with this one and it would make a good plane to step up to from a fixed pitch aircraft like a Cessna 152.

The sound set was recorded directly from a 180Hp Lycoming of the same configuration fitted to the Super Cub and is well up to the standard of the rest of the plane, from the stuttering tick-over that sounds like the engine will stop any second, to the lively buzz of full throttle, the Lycoming sounds utterly real and the external sounds are just right too.

If every cloud does have a silver lining, one of the ironies of the FS2002 release delay is that it has allowed FS2000 to enjoy a kind of Indian summer, warmed by the release of a slew of really good aircraft. Developers have really begun to get into their stride, and if all these planes can be patched to work in 2002, the new version will start with a hangar full of unbeatable aircraft - so maybe the wait will have been worth it after all. FSD guarantee that the Super Cub will work in FS2002, so if you buy this package it will be a long-term investment.

In 1954, a new Super Cub cost $4,295 - today a new build from Cub Crafters would set you back around $136,000 (a bargain, in my opinion; I'm already saving up), but the alternative is an FSD Cub for only $15. Whichever way you look at it, this sim is about as classy as they come, and it is such a pleasure to fly that it has not only reawakened my interest in touch and gos, but made me wonder how I can get my hands on some more flying time in a real one. The FlightSim Developer's Super Cub is a classic - if you don't buy it right now you will miss a huge amount of fun, and if you can feel affection for a piece of software, then this is sim that you just might fall in love with. Not to mention the pilot.