LIGHT SPORT CHAMP

It could have been a contender: while ACA’s much improved 7EC was the best Champ of all – and popular with owners – it only saw limited production

- Bob Davy

My first assignment as an aviation writer was an Aeronca Chief, the side-by-side ancestor of the tandem American Champion 7EC Champ you see before you. Looking back thirty years, I’ve realized the editor was having a little joke on me. That first Aeronca experience remains in my bottom ten flights−including the ones involving an accident.

Built-in the late thirties, the Chief was already fifty years old, never restored−read falling apart−and powered by the original ‘matching numbers’ 65 hp engine (well, maybe that many horses, when it was new, but not any more). And the airfield was experiencing a gale straight across its runway. I needed nearly full power to taxi through the long grass between hangar and runway, the takeoff roll felt like it crossed two counties and the climb rate was 350fpm at best. The Chief felt ‘out of control’, largely unresponsive to my pitch and roll inputs, with crazy adverse yaw from the ailerons, the aircraft flying me instead of me flying it. A gust of wind would have it hurtling towards the ground, and then another back up to the clouds again. It was an awful flight. Of course I shouldn’t have flown an underpowered aircraft in windy conditions (so not all the aircraft’s fault then.)

Check forward in time, and here we are at the spectacularly named Raleigh Executive Jetport (KTTA) near Sanford in North Carolina, where I have just found out that the Curtiss C-46 Commando military transport aircraft we are due to fly has blown a tyre. There isn’t a spare.