[Rick Masters]

Back in the early 1980s, I had a friend who hangered his ancient Piper Cub one summer at the Independence airport in Owens Valley. I saw him one day, and noticed the old Cub was a true tandem, with the passenger and pilot in line inside a narrow cockpit. Low drag!
    "What kind of glide do you get?" I asked.
    "Oh, about 10 to one," he said.
    "We should meet in the air over Mazourka Peak," I said. "There's great lift there. You can turn your engine off. We'll soar together. You can land on the mud flat at the south end if you have any problems and I'll come get you."
    So I dropped my motorcycle off at the mud flats and drove my old International Scout to Mazourka Launch and took off. Sure enough, as I was cruising along at 10,000 feet, here comes the Cub. My friend killed the engine and I pulled alongside in my 190 Moyes Meteor. We were perfectly matched in glide! It blew my mind. After 40 minutes or so, he left. I don't know if he had a starter of if he dove to start it, but he disappeared.
    Don Partridge and I had soared around the Whites in a Cessna 150 side-by-side, sometimes encountering 1200 fpm lift, but my friend, alone and light in the old Cub, had a much better l/d.
    I always figured, when I got old, I could get one of those old Cubs and play over all the thermal generators on the Sierra and Inyo/Whites that I knew so well.
    For some reason, or maybe just pure coincidence, the number 41 has often played a part in my luck.
    Now as soon as I joined the EAA for 40 bucks, this happened. Wish me luck!
    (Gee, I wonder if anybody else belongs to the EAA. If it's just me, I'll win it for sure!)    


http://www.eaavideo.org/detail/videos/most-recent_/video/5759972287001/win-a-piper-j3-cub-in-the-2018-eaa-sweepstakes?autoStart=true

[wingspan33]

Sorry Rick but from what I'm finding the EAA has somewhere around 100,000 members. But heck, that's better than a million to one odds! I'd love to win it myself, but I'd have to sell it in order to afford lessons.

I wonder what the value of that plane is? Are the instruments a new spiffy set or basic old school?

If hang gliding hadn't come along I probably would have learned to fly small aircraft. Yikes! I just heard myself say something like "If I hadn't heard of paragliding I probably would have learned to hang glide."

[Rick Masters]

that's better than a million to one odds!

Each EAA member automatically gets 10 chances to win.