PA-Cub

About

The Piper PA-18 Super Cub is one of the most-loved light aircraft ever produced. Descended from the Piper J-3 Cub of the 1930s — itself one of the defining aircraft of pre-war American general aviation — the Super Cub introduced more power, better controls, and a stronger structure while keeping the slow, friendly, taildragger handling that had made the Cub the world's most popular light aircraft. The PA-18 first flew in 1949 and entered production at Piper's Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, factory in 1950. Production ran from 1950 through 1994, with over 9,000 airframes built across all variants.

The Super Cub became the ultimate light bushplane — at home on wheels, skis, or floats, with the kind of short-takeoff-and-landing performance that lets it operate from improvised strips and remote rivers. Generations of bush pilots in Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48 states grew up flying the Super Cub, and surviving airframes continue in active commercial and recreational service today, more than seventy years after the type's first flight. The instantly-recognizable yellow-and-black livery — Lock Haven's standard factory paint scheme — became visual shorthand for "Piper Cub" in popular culture.

The unmistakable Super Cub silhouette — high wing, strut-braced, taildragger, with the large rear-cockpit door folded down — is one of the most-modeled bushplane subjects in modern RC scale flying.

In the simulator

A friendly scale subject for new pilots. The PA-Cub flies the way a real Super Cub does — slow, stable, gentle on the controls, and forgiving of mistakes. Generous wing area, gentle stall, and the kind of short-takeoff-and-landing performance that makes bush-style flying teachable. Use it for relaxed scale flying with low-and-slow scenic legs. A natural sibling of the HZ Super Cub (CV Planes Pack 4) and the PA-Cub with Floats variant in this same pack.