Hey!!!
I’m new here on the group, also new to tail draggers, I have a lot of experience flying Cessna’s currently flying a 210 and a 182, I’m also a Captain flying B763F atm but have Been on a 73 and a triple7 for the last 28 years, anyway…. My childhood dream was to own a SuperCub and last month the dream came true, I bought a Pa18-95!! They are hard to find here, not a lot of them, I live in Chile… last Wednesday was my first training flight with the instructor… as you all can imagine I was very excited and anxious about it , I waited almost a lifetime to be seated on the Cub !!!
All was well and exacting, we took off.. it was very windy…
At about 5 minutes of flying I started to feel a rare smell … minutes later smoke was coming in from the front, I was in command and told the instructor about it and that we need to return, so I called the tower, informed the situation and told them that we need to to come back…
Remember I said it was a windy day??? Well … we where almost stuck in the air, it felt like we weren’t moving at all, at 80knts
nothing like the 210
Anyway, smoke started to pump in really hard, I opened the side window so it could come out the cockpit… at that time I declared an emergency….
I was looking for the source while still on command, I mean it was my investment right, my new toy !! I wanted to fly it !!…
I noticed an incandescent thing between my foot’s on the firewall… at that moment I handed the command to the instructor… we were like a mile away from the runway, i started looking for a landing spot, nothing, all mountains trees and rocks, and I was thinking to my self, unbelievable, all this on the first flight??? I have never had an emergency whatsoever in my life and Now… come on!!! What about the 50k I just spent in this thing !!! ….
to make the story short we landed… and taxied out to the ramp, fire guys were waiting for us…. And the smoke??? WHAT SMOKE ?? No more smoke!! Like wen you take your car to the mechanic for a noise and you get to the garage and there is no more noise..
…
We think it came from the exhaust… we are searching….
after all it was not fun at all but we are Ok and the Cub will be good to go another day….
The fire extinguisher is behind the passenger set, there is no away I can reach that if I’m flying solo, and I’m on the market now for a Halon one, smaller like the PRT that spruce has, I had one of those in an Xp we owned a couple years back, fortunately I never had the chance to use it… what are you guys using? Locating them ??
I need one that could be reachable from the front seat, no lots of space In The cub…
A friend of mine told me about this forum, I registered and the first thing I notice are some posts about Fire !!! How bizarre….
and that’s why I’m writing…
Cheers from Chile !!
