Super Cubs, Alaska, and Shaun Lunt

http://shaunlunt.typepad.com/shootings/

Check this link out, I predict you'll enjoy it.

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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei

Larry,

Just looking at the pictures helped me to understand the magic that Alaska has. Never been there, but it is beautiful.

Thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Jim

It is indeed magnificent. However, the winter I spent on Elemendorf AFB got a bit gloomy and cold (-20F typical) after awhile. Summer was delightful, with fishing on the Kenai peninsula and a train trip to Fairbanks. (I could have done without the earthquake and huge mosquitoes..)

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I love the Super Cubs with their cartoon look, oversized balloon tires. Naturally, they can land and take off from almost anywhere, including sandbars.

And the women! Anchorage was lousy with discos (what hadn't fallen off during the quake), just brimming with luscious, bikinied babes, all interested in bearded wilderness men who knew how to dance.. A true party town, by any standard. (I learned to drink there.)

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"Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish." -Stephen Wright

Hi Larry,

I guess we were there around the same time! Don't forget the holes in the ground along 4th & 5th Streets that used to be buildings..... Did you get to see the merchant ship on the side of the mountain above Seward?


Jim Pollock

Been there...still loved to see the pics, and more of Alaska's natural beauty.

Highly recommended that y'all visit, someday. Fly up, take the ferry back, or t'other way around, no matter. Pray for decent weather. June was good, first half of July was fine, then the monsoons came, and it rained for 45 days straight, until I left Ketchikan, just before Labor Day weekend.

Ketchikan is the furthest South "big city" (10k then) in AK. IF you can, while in K., hike up Deer Mountain, for a great view of the Tongass Narrows. Beware of the 'skeeters...be prepared...you won't believe the numbers. Don't forget your camera. Steve

Steve Helmick
Renton, Washington
USA

Somewhere I have a video tape of extreme flying in cubs in AK. they landed on hillsides of loose rocks that were steep enough to make Daytonas banking blush. another trick that fascinated me was the running turn takeoff. the would head down the sandbar and after getting some speed turn 90 degrees to finish the take off run, amazing to watch, unbelievable till you have seen it. My favorite was when they would land and take off from a sandbar that was to short, so they would come in using those huge tires like floats, skipping across the water for a hundred feet then finish the rollout on sand. taking off they rolled I would guess 100 feet on the sand then skip across the water to finish getting flying speed. amazing skill,, truly amazing

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_ak_alaska_plane_crash.html

Shaun Lunt was killed in his Super Cub in an accident flying in Alaska. Sad day indeed.

Apparently another stall-spin incident, though of course the press reports that "the engine" stalled.

Mike Keville

>Apparently another stall-spin incident, though of course the
>press reports that "the engine" stalled.
>
>Mike Keville

The media, almost without fail, gets it wrong about aviation incidents due to their ignorance about things to do with aviation. They almost never understand that it is not the engine that enables an airplane to fly; they think that without the engine the airplane will always "crash". They don't get that the engine enables the airplane to climb and maintain altitude nor do they get that an airplane will glide without the engine running.

Stated in the body of the article linked by Bruce Shipp is the reason for the crash:
"The second time he circled, the plane stalled and spun and hit the ground and burned," Habersetzer said. "When the airplane burst into flames, I knew it was too late." Habersetzer, an extremely experienced pilot with over 7,000 hours in Super Cubs alone, said nothing about the engine failing, and he was there seeing what happened.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with ignorance itself; we are all ignorant, just on different subjects. What is wrong with the media's ignorance is that they are so anxious to get a story out that they will publish the first thought that comes into their head about many things - aviation just seems to be one of the things about which they are most ignorant. The media also seems driven to write about aviation incidents since they seem so spectacular to the public.

For the media to write about a car crash it has to be a really spectacular crash to warrant an article; if a four-engine airliner has one engine fail and returns to land completely without incident the media reports that "no lives were lost in the engine failure of the fully-loaded 747." Never mind that the 747 will fly just fine on three engines...it sells news time or papers.

Two years in Alaska, courtesy of USAF. Elmendorf AFB and Naknek AFB. I'm convinced I was the first person ever to fly an R/C plane in Naknek, and maybe in all of Alaska?. That was 1954. Home-built radio, with vacuum tubes!

Floyd in OR

An Alaska resident of my homebuilt Yahoo group mentioned he saw Lunt load 5-gallon fuel cans in the Super Cub baggage area on his last takeoff. The crash stories mention immediate fire on impact. Seems like a reasonable enough explanation of the immediate fire. Dunno if the impact itself was survivable.
Peter Havriluk

The media reports on aviation are almost always sensationalism, with no knowledge.

On one of my trips to Atlanta, an airplane landed on a freeway with some damage. The TV news babe was standing with the airplane behind her, microphone in hand, saying that people were looking an engine on the hill next to the road, because the pilot reported that he lost an engine....!!!

Sadly anyone that knows a topic, will find these kind of mistakes in most news broadcasts. Unfortunately the public with little specific knowledge, believes most of what they say.

I think that wjat happened is called, in Alaska anyway, a 'moose stall'. Steep turns around a point, on the deck, paying attention to a camera....


Peter Havriluk