This cover is fascinating - not sure what the fellow is doing. Maybe he is cutting a Moose loose.

Anyway have any of you ever climbed out while in flight?

I've only been out like that twice to parachute out of a Cessna.

My guess is that gent's antlers came loose and he's trying to tie them back on.

Yeah, about a thousand times, although I wasn't reaching for anything but another jumper or thin air.

Only from a helicopter - low level water entry. I believe the pilot was supposed be below 30' and under 30 knots forward speed - but it always seemed more like 300 and 300!
Can you say "Never again!"

I was in the front seat of the J3 When I noticed I had to add a bit more right rudder to counteract a bit of yaw, looked to the right and saw Wiley standing on the float and holding on to the strut. Same guy was flying his Stinson with a buddy behind on water skis when he got to fast and lifted off.

I think the guy on the cover is probably trying to gain control. We had a big set of moose horns tied to the float strut on a 180 and it was almost uncontrollable. Ended up taking them back down and loaded into the beech. A seasoned guy once told me the most cumbersome thing he ever did was try to fly a christmas tree tied to the floats on a 180

A full sized mattress wrapped around the elevators of a supercub on skis is a bit sporting as well.

A full size mattress wrapped around the elevators on anything is a lot more than I would liketo have to deal with, unless I was parked on the ramp.

I love Super Cubs.

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:
A full sized mattress wrapped around the elevators of a supercub on skis is a bit sporting as well.

Now there must be more to this story . . .

I was building a log cabin on a little piece of land I was homesteading just north of Denali. At the time the closest landing spot I had was five miles away and I was hauling everything in on snowshoes. I decided to airdrop some gear and had a friend along to toss it out the back of the cub. For what ever reason, he decided to untie the rope holding the mattress together before he tossed it out and it promptly wrapped around the horizontal stabilizer and elevator. The plane went wild. It was thirty below zero, we were on skis with the the door open, which doesn't improve handling anyway, and 100 ft high over black spruce. The strong vibrations were intersting enough but the elevators were very stiff and unresponsive and when they did respond it was quite facinating as it seemed to be either full on up or down. It was a lot like riding a mechanical bull, only a lot colder, and I managed to herd it back to the little lake we had started from and plop it down.
After that I got the wise idea of strapping a Elan smowmachine to the lumber rack under my cub and flying it in but that is another story.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 458Win:
The plane went wild. [\QUOTE]


I've been thinking on this and decided to show off my knowledge of aeronaughtics. . . or something. (Which differs markedly from offical "theorys")

I reckon you're lucky. With all that drag at the rear end your little puddle jumper it could only keep going on. Like a shuttlecock.

Now if it had wrapped arount the main wing and in line to buffet the tailplane, well you'd know what a wild ride was.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Kobe:
I think the guy on the cover is probably trying to gain control.

I'd put money on that.
But it looks like the strut walker has a knife in his hand. Obviously some dork lasso'ed a moose and he got stuck on.

Interesting how the door is open against the airflow, and the strut walker wouldn't be helping the drag problem either.

Now with the Christmas tree thing, that's interesting. Crosswise wouldn't work too well.
Top first ? nah. Stump first?, well, maybe with a Beaver on floats. A 180 is quite a plane, but... gee, does one have to scrounge pine/fir trees up that way?

I regularly fly my SuperCub or Producer with large moose racks tied to the struts. They cause so much drag and I have to hold so much rudder that if I have to haul large ones (over 70") I prefer hauling one on each strut rather than just one.

I seriously doubt that the rack in the ficticious drawing would be causing enough drag to be a real problem but the banging and bumping would be a concern

I've dropped several thousand tons of stuff from airplanes, including a few thousand people, and all I can say about that mattress stunt is that you should be dead.

As I always teach my students - no matter what - just fly the airplane.

I gotta figure out how to post pictures, so I can show you how to skid logs with a PA-22...

Tumbleweed,
If you email those pictures to me I will post them for you.
Allen
awj@generaldesigninc.com

Sorry but I don't know the story here.

I'm guessing it was a stunt, you can see about the most perfect stretch of road running next to the shore below them.

Great picture Mark. At first I thought there was someone in the back seat.

Maybe someone with more experience than I will jump in but there seems to be no aileron applied nor rudder as you would expect if a person was standing outside and someone else was in the back trying to counter the weight.

One would think that ship would soon start dipping to the right.

Whatever is going on gives me the willeys. I am with you - land on the road and fix it.

I can't really see into the back seat. I was assuming there was someone there since the cub is soloed from the back.

I googled "88172" in the hopes I could find something out about the story, but all the hits were just pointing to this pic.

I was wondering about the control surfaces as well, which is another reason why I suspect this may just be a prank photo, where they turned the engine off, guy climbs out and acts like he's going to prop it then scrams back inside 3 seconds later. Any more time than that and something would be deflected a lot more than what you see.

Well I haven't exactly been out on purpose except for a couple of parachuting episodes. But I've also dropped a bit of tonnage out of airplanes at low level and at altitude.

Kind of off subject but I had a 500 gal portable bladder tank, also known as a "rollagon" full of JP-4 jump the ramp blocks in turbulence and eject itself off the ramp. Made for a pretty spectacular "water balloon" when it hit. The only thing that could have made it better would have been an ignition source..

I was on a smoke jumper mission one time over Oregon near Crater Lake. The guys had the side jump door pins pulled and the door stowed in the back and were starting to get cold. I went back and wrestled it onto its hinges so I could get it closed. At one point the door caught a little wind and started to suck out the opening and I started to go with it. I didn't have a harness and tether or a chute on.

For just a split second I thought I was going out.

That may well have been one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I'll never forget the image of those trees whipping by 500 below. As I write this I can picture them now. Lush, green with rocks interspresed in vivid reds and browns. Gives me the chills...

Fortunately I was able to pull the whole rig back into the plane. I should have just let the SOB go. But hind sight's 20/20.

Man when looking back I can't believe how STUPID of a stunt that was

Well when I was a young and impressionable cropduster, the story was that a previous company pilot had done a circuit with two people on both lower wings.

With that in mind, I had occasion to need to taxi to the other end of a very long runway. The young aircraft-loader had done parachute jumps and he sat about mid wing on a 450hp Ag Cat.
Somehow I got faster and faster and lifted off.
Didn't even feel as though little Jimmy was there. Took a quick look at about 6 feet up and he was looking at me with such a pleading expression I thought I'd take pity on him and not give him a full circuit.

I mean, if he was silly enough to go up in his home made Gyro-copter, how worse was I?

I had a skydiver climb out of a 182, get up on the strut and pull himself up onto the top of the wing. He sat there on the root of the wing with his legs hanging over the leading edge - it caused a terrible buffet but the plane was still flying. Then he sort of half stood up while holding the leading edge with one hand and tried to run to the wing tip. He didn't get too far before falling off but luckily it was far enough that he didn't hit the tail on his way past.

My guess is that the cub photo is a stunt. However, it is possible that it was an endurance flight, though what the fellow is doing would be tough to say. Changing rockers? Cub endurance flights are discussed in a little gem of a book called 'Piper Cubs' by peter M. Bowers. Anyways, it seemed to be a thing to do in the 30's. One J3 was modified so that the passenger (in the front seat) could lean through a hole in the winshield to service the engine. The longest cub endurance flight took place in 1939. They were up for a month. For the sake of humanity I hope it is never broken.

I had to fly a badly injured man out of big timber on the end of a 250' longline to an area we could get him into the helicopter for the trip to the hospital. He was strapped in a manbasket and the trip was about three miles. We could'nt pick up much speed because the basket wanted to fly back up into the tailrotor so it was a long hover. About two months later he showed up on the service landing. I thought we were going to get a big thank you. He walked up to me and asked if I was one of the crew flying that day. I said yes, I was the one that was flying. He looked at me and said
" if that ever happens to me again you just let me die"! I guess he didn't like being "outside".

That's funny!