Keep the Skinny Birds Flying Safely
try https://skyvector.com/ and Google Maps satellite view.
With an all wood wing, she needs to be hangared! Have you checked at private airports/grass strips? They may balk at spamcans, but may make room for an antique...
Ask your CFI why a student pilot learns more about flying in one hour of dual in a glider than he learns in ten hours of dual in a powered aircraft. This fact has been proven many times. If he doesn't know why, he's too ignorant to be teaching your daughter, and anyone else.
Learn to fly first, then learn to fiddle with knobs and chat on the radio. Flying is the foundation she needs to establish before getting distracted and overwhelmed with the panel and communication. She needs 20 hours of dual and 20 hours of solo to take her check ride. She can fly 30 to 35 hours of the forty in the Collegiate, then take the checkride in a spamcan.
Before she has her first lesson in a spamcan, she should sit in the cockpit for at least a couple of hours and become familiar with where everything is located and how it moves by running through all the checklists and putting her hands on everything she's checking. Then when aloft, she won't be wasting time looking for where things are when she should be focusing on learning how the plane handles.
Size 42: no problem!
TJ Neff has the one in Novato, CA. She's been on the market for quite a while. The asking price seems a bit high, but with the spare, 0 SMOH Lycoming O-145, it's worth it, if it's been pickled and has good documentation. I have no idea how he was planning to install a starter on an O-145 in a Collegiate, and to me, it's unnecessary weight. The O-145 is anemic enough without adding weight to it and they readily start by hand if you prime them right.
Tom Porterfield, the president of this club, lives at the airport in Abernathy, and has a Collegiate with the fabric stripped off.
Pat Cole's Dad's Collegiate is covered but needs a prop. Yes Bryan is a College town, but I'd forgotten it was Aggieville.
There are several club members in the Lone Star State, but I don't know which ones have flyable Collegiates. Tom may know...
Whoever made wheelpants for Taylorcraft, also made them for Porterfield, as they both came with Shinn wheels & brakes.
Judt Birchler is a club member. She started ladieslovetaildraggers.com and used to fly a '40 Collegiate, so she could tell your daughter what it's like, until she can get into one herself.
Welcome to our wee club for the skinny birds, Roy!
If you are under 5' 10" and 180 pounds, you will fit well into a Collegiate cockpit. Solo is from the front seat only, and with the instrument panel a foot from your face, it seems a bit claustrophobic, but you get acclimated to it by the time you've taxied to the end of the active.
The Collegiate is a great trainer, provided you have a CFI who knows how to fly conventional gear aircraft. I know many pilots who started out in Collegiates and have special places in their hearts for them.
There's plenty of info in the forum and blogs sections. There's a Collegiate in Bryan for sale. A man named Pat Cole, with a motorcycle shop, is trying to find a new home for his late Dad's CP-50, but I have no idea what he wants for her. She probably needs a bit of TLC to get aloft.
Soft landings,
Andy
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