I have a friend who is looking in to a late fifties Champ as a backcountry aircraft. The example of interest has a 160 hp O-320 engine, Airstreaks and a borer prop. It seems like it would make a great little bushplane. Does anyone here experience with a similar setup?

Holy smokes, that would be a rocketship Champ. Obvious drawbacks: useful load, lack of flaps.

Put VG's on it and call it good.

Sounds awesome to me.

Should be a great airplane, with plenty of performance.

Tell him to have someone look carefully at the spars. ADs on them, plus.

MTV

An article in the 3/96 issue of Private Pilot, "From Pylons to Pine Trees", describes how Reno air racer Alan Preston bought one of those when he wanted to get into flying the Idaho back country with Bob Hannah & other friends. His was a 150hp oleo-geared 1962 7GCB (with flaps). He might still have it, but I can't make out the tail number so who knows.

Thanks for the feedback. I will pass it along.

mtv wrote:Should be a great airplane, with plenty of performance.

Tell him to have someone look carefully at the spars. ADs on them, plus.

MTV

Loose rib nails too.


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I had a 1960 7GCB with 150 hp, flaps and oleo gear. It was a great little airplane and got me where I needed to go. Not a Super Cub but close at about a third of the money. Mine had the original spars.

Should be a very capable, and relatively cost effective.

Had a 7GCBC and 7GCAA (basically an upgraded Champ) both 150 HP and spring gear, the 7GCAA (flapless) actually performed and flew better, lighter on controls and lighter aircraft. With skill you could land it just as short as the 7GCBC. The thing I liked about the 7GCBC (my old one) was it had the safe-air-wings which was slightly extended with all metal spars. Poor mans SuperCub for sure, to me its kinda boring looking especially the square dash faux wood 70's look and interior, but almost the same performance (yeah before someone gets their panties in a wad, I fly a SC daily for work). Like another member said, at a fraction of the cost of a similar SC. FWIW.

I had nearly this exact airplane. I've got 2 pics of it in my album here if someone else wants to add them to the thread ( Zane, I don't like your photo posting setup....
It was a reasonably light plane at 960 ish empty. Catto prop, cub gear, 19 gallon tanks out of a citabria, vg's, all of the stuff minus flaps that you'd think would make a great poor mans supercub.
I should also say that I got really spoiled on a light supercub prior to having this champ, and because of that, I just never did like the champ. It didn't slow down nearly as well as I thought it ought to, it didn't cruise very fast for having 150 hp and the controls were very heavy. Ultimately, the lack of flaps, and a very forward empty cg were very detrimental to this plane. My neighbor has a champ with a c-85 stroker, and it flies much nicer.

If this 160 hp champ is a smoking hot deal, maybe.... my.02. Clint

Super11 wrote:I had nearly this exact airplane. I've got 2 pics of it in my album here if someone else wants to add them to the thread ( Zane, I don't like your photo posting setup....

It took me less than 30 seconds to skip out to your gallery and copy the URL to this pic. Maybe this will help.