Blow Your Own Doors Off

This appeared in an Aeronca web discussion; I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a perennial issue of minimal importance, requiring in-depth review: Can the 7AC Champ be flown with its door removed? Answer: Yeah, pull the pin(s), extract door, go fly. Follow-up: Is there an STC permitting door removal? Yes, and I’m guessing a few Champ owners were unaware or don’t care and fly without the door anyhow. It’s fun, so let’s consider door-on vs. door-off logic and/or consequences.

Forty-one years ago, while shopping for a J-3 Cub—an airplane I’d never flown but long adored—I fell in love with the 7AC Champ, because it was half the Cub’s price. I’ve flogged this cost analysis before, and it’s unrelated to aircraft performance, which should be overlooked when romance is in the air. They’re both slow and burn car gas at 4 gph. Both turn heads, and both are called Cubs by the unwashed masses. In unadulterated forms, both typically have 65-HP engines without pesky electrics. Occupants will be miserably cold in winter, plus bits of spring and fall, depending on location. I’d purchased my Champ in Santa Cruz, California, where weather is an illusion. Except lately, where it’s a brutal reality but don’t worry, droughts will return. Always do.

One attraction to the Cub was its door. Clamshell halves, the top piece swings up to latch beneath the wing, where it sometimes remains attached in flight, while the lower half drops like a college student’s dirty jeans on a dorm floor, there until graduation. It’s sublime. Fly along at low speeds and altitudes, wind ruffling what’s left of your hair while drying your eyeballs in uncoordinated turns. Splattered bug innards lash the rear-seat occupant, coating skin and togs with a patina of real aviator moxie. It’s the next best thing to what we grass strip delinquents really seek—open cockpit flying.

The problem with open cockpit is that it’s best enjoyed in warmer months. Come winter, the experience requires deeper rationalization than what fuels lesser aviation endeavors. Here’s a quote by Henry Townsend, from Bootleg Skies, on open cockpit flying in 1929: “Sitting in that open cockpit on a cold morning it ... it’s, well, I don’t know. It lets you know you’re alive, somehow. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

Yes, Henry, it does. You’re fictitious and not kidding anyone. I know, because my lust for flying without overhead cabin restrictions led me to buy a Marquart 180-HP, open cockpit biplane back when I still clung to a shard of romantic youth. It was great. Exactly what I’d sought since loafing around Ramapo Valley Airport, New York, in my early teens when absolutely no one wanted me near their aircraft. Can’t blame them.

Studies conducted under an IHOP* grant by the Institute For Predetermined Studies (IFPS) in Promise City, Iowa, concluded that there is nothing better in flight—possibly in life—than open cockpit biplane flying (tailwheel, from grass runways). What research didn’t mention, though, was cold air chased wimps like me beneath a Plexiglas canopy, where solar heat keeps things survivable.

Open cockpit flying in above frigid temps was everything I wanted in aviation. Four wings stitched together with struts and wires added the necessary drag to remind me how important it was to forego destinations and enjoy the sky. When temps dropped, I swapped the windshield for a full canopy that opened like a coffin lid, vaguely similar to a Messerschmitt bf 109’s. This was disconcerting should we flip inverted and become trapped after a botched landing, so I attached a sheathed hunting knife to my shoulder harness to give the false comfort of an emergency escape tool. Although never needed, it imparted an extra layer of self-image cool, and flying open-cockpit biplanes is largely about imagery.

Water vapor is a nuisance inside airplane canopies or cabins on cold mornings. Most pilots breathe, although I’ve had to remind some students to do so. Breath holds moisture, which adheres to chilled Plexiglas like scandal to politicians. To mitigate, we crack cabin windows, and in the winterized Marquart, I’d start the engine with the canopy secured, then with power at idle, release the latch just enough to circulate fresh air.

Inevitably, one late winter afternoon I forgot to relatch. With engine gauges in the green beneath a fetchingly blue sky, I advanced the throttle to taxi through the gray slush when—SLAM! The slipstream grabbed the unsecured canopy and twisted it from its piano hinge with Jupiter’s wrath, reminding me that surrendering to comfort came with risk. But flight demands balancing risk with reward, and the ratio must be considered before altering aircraft equipment.

Back to the web query. Is it legal to remove a Champ’s door? Yes, with the STC (there’s an STC for everything). Get an IA to do the paperwork if you want the merit badge, although the airplane won’t notice one way or the other. But the authorities might.

I doubt if 12 people in the FAA could properly identify a 7AC in a lineup with Cubs or know about the door-off STC. I certainly didn’t when I bought my Champ and, because I wanted that unconfined Cub experience, at half-price, I removed my Champ’s door to see how it would fly. Flew fine. No adverse characteristics until all the papers (registration, airworthiness certificate …) flashed around the cockpit during climb-out then disappeared through the open doorway.

Later, standing at attention before one of the dozen FAA employees who knew something about Champs, I pleaded ignorance while groveling for forgiveness and paperwork replacement. (Insert trombone whah-whahs here).

Lesson learned? Possibly. Open cockpit is great with minimal downside. Likewise, Cubs and Champs with windows open or doors off on warm evenings are also great. Getting caught with your paperwork knickers around your ankles? Priceless to the FSDO rep stifling a smirk while mulling your fate and wishing that she, too, flew a Champ.

* Iowa House Of Parody; no rights reserved; no cows too sacred