Our first customer was a ferry flight from Easton, MD to Racine, WI. The airplane is a 1946 Piper J-3 Cub. A radio control model of the same airplane is what got me interested in airplanes and led me to begin learning to fly and ultimately the creation of Kingdom Aviation, LLC. The Piper Cub was designed and built in the 1930's and production continue until the mid 1940's. It has taught, and continues to teach, a multitude of pilots how to fly. This particular Cub would be continuing it's legacy in a Milwaukee, WI suburb by serving as a classroom for pilots to learn to fly in.
The delivery flight took fifteen flying hours and four days due to a six hour weather delay. It was an amazing journey watching the beautiful landscape SLOWLY scroll by just five hundred feet below my seat. The Cub and I became best friends battling gusty crosswinds, endless turbulence, and not-so-perfect landings. It is amazing how an airplane of such age still has so much to offer. It has a very pleasant way of reminding you to slow down and enjoy life instead of hurrying off to wherever it is you are going. Too often I get tied up in flying shiny airplanes that can cover hundreds of miles in an hour while flying miles above the earth, often out of sight of all the things that make this world beautiful and inspiring.
Some memorable events along the way included crossing the bay northeast of Baltimore, overflying an outdoor wedding ceremony, passing horse-drawn carriages of the Amish communities, the in-flight meal (leftover dinner roll from Texas Roadhouse), and flying the Lake Michigan shoreline of Chicago.
It was an exhausting trip and there were times I promised myself I would never do it again, but the memories made, people met, and amazing views have me counting down the days until the next time I can hand prop a cold Continental, crawl in the back seat, and takeoff on a journey to cross my beautiful homeland at just 65mph.
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