Backcountry Pilot

With a new super-sized engine, a composite prop, bushwheels, and a wing cuff kit, Kevin Quinn takes his Skywagon into places that most Super Cubs would think twice about-- usually above 7,000 MSL. View the host of modifications that make this plane a standout.

Welcome to the Texas hill country, home to a thriving "brush" pilot community, and the new Texas STOL Round Up annual shortfield competition. This month's Featured Trip Report comes to you in video form, so please enable full screen and enjoy.

We've jokingly called it a "Burning Man" for airplane junkies, but it's got everything you care about: Bush planes, wide-open backcountry landing zones, campfires, guns, explosions, and a free t-shirt.

Given the legend status of the Cessna 180, there's no shortage of good specimens to write about. In this case, it's the working Skywagon owned and operated by Taj Shoemaker of North River Air, based in Kodiak, Alaska.

Two big-engined Cessna 170s venture out to explore the Nizina river valley, a narrow region between the massive Wrangell and St Elias mountain ranges that is a pilot's paradise of airstrips, public cabins, and the natural wonders of Alaska.

A Skywagon pilot has a brush with the risks of high wind water operations, and ends up spending the night out.