Great Airplanes 2: Piper J-3 Cub

By Andrew Herd (21 October 2004)

Once upon a time, way back when, general aviation as we know it didn't exist. Ordinary people simply did not own airplanes, because after the first world wartime stocks dried up, all that was left were the products of a few struggling manufacturers. That didn't stop a great deal of innovation going on, and between them, those people came up with some classic designs, like the Waco Tourist, which was without question the finest sport biplane of its time - but sold only eighteen examples during the entire 1930s. The reason may well have had something to do with the fact that the Tourist sold for $5025, which was a lot of money in those days. Despite Henry Ford's example of tooling up to mass produce the Trimotor, GA hulls ended up being handbuilt pretty much to individual customer requirements, because leisure aviation was a rich man's sport at a time when most folk were doing their best just to make ends meet.

To find the beginnings of the Cub, we have to go back to the mid-twenties, when C. G. and Gordon Taylor founded an aircraft design company. Like many businesses, it started out okay, but came apart in the Crash and a fellow called William T. Piper ended up buying the rights to a plane they made - called the E-2 Cub - and the remaining assets of the company, in 1931 for a mere $600. The E-2 had never been a big seller and it must have seemed a brave, even foolhardy purchase at the time. C.G. Taylor went off with a bounce in his step to establish Taylorcraft Aviation in Ohio the following year and Piper set about starting up in business for himself, although initially he still traded under the name of the Taylor Aircraft Company in its home of Bradford, Pennsylvania.

At first, things didn't go too well. There was a big fire at the plant that nearly destroyed everything and Piper ended up moving his operation to a former silk mill at Lock Haven, with all the disruption that entailed, but he finally got sorted out and in 1937 he sold nearly 700 airframes. What was his secret? Well, Piper had a modern looking design on his hands called the J-3, which for all that it packed only 40 hp and nine gallons of fuel, retailed for only $1300. Over the next decade, production is estimated to have totalled over 14,000 hulls.

The original Continental A-40 left the Cub just a little underpowered, so William T. offered a 50 horse variant as an option, along with a Franklin of similar output, and eventually a Lycoming as well. Lycoming ended up establishing their premises only a few miles away, which led to a marriage of extreme convenience to all concerned, though few J-3s were ever fitted with their engines. The Cub became a runaway success and by 1939, Piper was selling somthing like 1300 hulls a year, which is the sort of sales performance that would make most manufacturers faint dead away these days (Cessna, for example, has plans to sell only 600 piston singles in 2004).

By 1940, the Cub had stabilized in a form we would all recognize, powered by a 65 hp Continental, turning a wooden prop. By now the J-3 had acquired such luxuries as a steerable tailwheel and a 12 gallon fuel tank, but war loomed and in 1941, the factory converted to building the L-4 version, which became a kind of aerial Jeep. Amazingly, Piper promoted it as a bomber and Special Forces transport at one time, but most of the 5000 or so that got built did their time as light transports - the one concession to comfort they offered being a heater, but this meant that they also had to have an electrical system, so they were remarkably sophisticated compared to ordinary J-3s. I can't quite imagine the enemy quaking in his trenches at the approach of a formation of Cub bombers, so it is probably fortunate that nothing came of that particular venture.

After the war, production peaked at more than 6000 Cubs a year, which amounted to something like six an hour, before it fell back back sharply in 1947, when only 700 or so were built. This was not good enough for Piper and so production ceased in favor of the PA-11, which was still very clearly a Cub, and paved the way for the PA-18 Super Cub of 1950 which is still much in demand today for short field operations in the boonies. All the planes in the Cub family have their claims to distinction, but if any single one can lay claim to be a classic, it has to be the original, yellow, J-3.

It seems amazing that Piper stopped making the model after one year of less than stellar sales figures, but don't forget that the war had catalysed some enormous advances in aviation and William T. was looking over his shoulder at the opposition. One of the reasons why the J-3 passed its sell-by date was the fact that it wasn't a swift airplane. Cub owners need patience, as a 65 hp J-3 typically cruises at about 62 knots, which makes headwinds a constant consideration and the range of 135 nm or so makes fuel planning a necessity; but nowadays most pilots fly these planes purely for the pleasure of doing so and without ambitions of getting anyplace other than back home again. That being said, some surprisingly long flights have been made in Cubs and it doesn't do to underestimate their dogged reliability; but in 1947 the design was looking more than a little tired.

The Cub's home environment is a grass field, where its 35 knot stalling speed and short runs make it ideal, just as long as you don't have to outclimb any trees, tall buildings, wires, or hills on a hot, still day. If that is the case, you either need a bigger engine (some Cubs have been refurbed with 85 or even 90 horse Continentals), or a Super Cub. J-3 Cubs are generally pleasant to fly, but they have one or two drawbacks which are inclined to catch the unwary out; notably a fair degree of adverse yaw and somewhat challenging crosswind performance that results from the combination of a light airframe with a very low stalling speed. The net result is that quite a few Cubs have been lost spinning out of poorly judged base turns, in landing accidents and from being blown away in big gusts. On top of that, given that the only way to start a Cub is by the forgotten art of propping, quite a few J-3s have charged away and totalled themselves before their pilot had a chance of getting strapped in.

So, despite the fact that tens of thousands of PPLs have Cub time, the increasing proportion of pilots with trigear only experience need to approach J-3s with a little caution. Get into one and the first sign that you are not in a modern airplane - apart from the fact that you are sitting in back, should you be soloing - is the heel brakes. The best assumption to make about these is that they will not work and that if they do that they will fade badly if they get too hot. Some owners have got around this by uprating the brakes, leading to the opposite problem, which is brakes that are far too effective; and quite a few modified aircraft have ended up with splintered props and shock loaded engines through being stood on their noses. Once you have got used to the anemic rate of climb (not bad compared to our Rallye, which only takes off because of the curvature of the earth), there is the adverse yaw to deal with, which means that the Cub has to be helped around turns with a generous boot of rudder. It feels wrong if you are used to modern singles, but that is how planes used to be and don't forget that the J-3 was considered to have good handling in its day. Needless to say, the J-3 has a stick, rather than a yoke, and it is all the more pleasant to fly for it.

Instrumentation is best described as sparse; standard fit being an airspeed indicator, altimeter, tachometer and oil pressure gauge. There is also, though it doesn't qualify as a gauge, a fuel level indicator, which is a cork with a wire stuck in it, floating in the fuel tank which is just behind the panel, so a sneaky in-flight cigarette is out. But you don't need many instruments to fly a Cub; this being a plane for the seat of the pants flyer who isn't bothered by the lack of such refinements as flaps, or efficient draft exclusion.

Every time I take a look at it, I realise that the FS2004 Piper J-3 Cub is one of the most overlooked features of the package. On reflection, I suspect that few simmers ever take one of the 'A Century of Flight' (ACOF) planes for a spin, which is a shame, since without exception they tend to be better simulations than the default GA planes. A lot of effort by Microsoft went into getting those designs just right and by comparison, the Cessnas, Beeches and Boeings are getting a little long in the tooth and if the Lear did grow a snazzy new visual model for 2004, its panel is a throwback all the way to FS2000.

The idea of such good simulations ending up being neglected is hard to understand, except that it doesn't seem that they are what most simmers want. Some real world pilots won't entertain the idea of rag and wire planes, but most of us would give a pint of blood to log time in them. But Flight Simulator is a whole different ball game and while I seriously enjoy cruising throttled right back and admiring the view, the sim doesn't quite cut it for VFR, perhaps because nothing changes and unless you go out and spend a whole lot of money on addon scenery, neither to the airfields.

I am sure that the whole ACOF idea must have seemed irresistible to the Microsoft team when FS2004 was in the planning stage, granting as it did an opportunity to go back and deal with some of history's greatest planes, but somehow, despite all the pizazz that surrounded the launch, I gain the impression that it wasn't quite what the customers wanted. Right now, many developers are probably scratching their heads wondering what simmers do want, given that there don't seem to be any hard and fast rules for launching a successful product any more. Microsoft must be thinking the same way, because I notice that they have launched a survey of their European customer base and I assume that others are in the pipeline.

Anyway, back to the ACOF Cub. I am going to come clean and say right now that this is one of my favorite planes in the entire package and it is also the best J-3 simulation I have ever seen. I remember looking at the 2D panel during the beta and thinking, 'Wow! Imagine what it would be like if all the planes had panels that looked as realistic as this!' and I still think that, if anyone at Microsoft happens to be reading this. If a third party developer released a Cub this good, it would get plastered with awards, because the team have somehow managed to pull off the almost impossible trick of coming up with a simulation that does everything except smell right - just take a look at the reflections in the glass on those gauges and the trouble someone has gone to getting the shapes of all the needles right.

The visual model has hardly anything missing apart from maybe the logo on the tail and it captures the line of the original very neatly, right down to the external aileron control runs. It also has one of the more convincing simulated pilots I have seen, a middle-aged guy who looks like he is concentrating hard on coordinating that rudder. The VC has a slightly blurred panel graphic, but very sharp gauges and it is probably the mode most people will choose when they use the J-3, which is a shame, since that 2D panel is a peach. Choices, choices.

The flight model is spot on. Microsoft have captured the adverse yaw very neatly - just bank the Cub into a turn and watch the ball wander until you kick it gently back into place. The ground handling is questionable, but then it is that way on all the planes, ACOF being intended to be a simulation of flight, rather than of taxiing, so I guess we can let it pass. Neither will the Microsoft J-3 win any awards in the sideslipping stakes, but it does it well enough to dump height over the trees at Lago's Emma Field, which is good enough for me. All in all, I think the Cub gives a really good impression of what it is like to fly an aircraft from the Golden Age and it doesn't surprise me that the original sold so well. Think as I might, I cannot come up with a plane from modern times that is as cheap and as fun to fly, though we hope that our RV9a will be all of that and some. We might even paint it yellow.

Meantime, I take my hat off to Microsoft. The boys and gals did good with this one.

Andrew Herd