By Vanessa Lenz
SLN Staff
Last week East Troy’s Jeff Parnau learned he was the winner of not your everyday prize package.
Parnau said he was shocked when he received a call from the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Win the Cub Sweepstakes chairman Tim Casserly Sept. 10 to notify him he had won a rare 1940’s airplane.
“Nobody was more surprised than me,” Parnau said.
He said he enters EAA’s annual sweepstakes every year, but never expected to win the grand prize.
“The last time I won something was a game when I was 9 years old,” he said.
Parnau said he and his wife Sandy and her father filled out entry forms they found in their monthly “EAA Sport Aviation” magazines.
According to the EAA, there were about 865,000 entries in this year’s contest.
“All the submitted entries were deposited and shuffled in an Oshkosh Corporation-built concrete mixer, then Casserly, of EAA Chapter 22, drew the six prizewinners, and Dick Knapinski of EAA’s communications office announced the winners” said the EAA in the contest announcement on its website.
Parnau, who has been a pilot for more than 40 years, plans to put the plane to use at his flight school, East Troy Aviation at East Troy Airport.
He said his regular rental fleet was down to one airplane so the 1940 Piper J-3 that he won will fit perfectly into his Light Sport Aircraft flight training operation.
“We’re gonna make pilots with it,” Parnau said.
EAA said it chose the Cub for the 2012 sweepstakes grand prize to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the iconic taildragger.
“It has less than 100 hours on it since a complete airframe restoration and overhaul of its Continental A-65-8 engine,” the EAA said.
Restored to original condition, the airplane includes factory wheelpants, TrickAir Sport 1500 snow skis, sealed struts, Slick magnetos, and a 12-gallon wing tank, according to the EAA.
Parnau has been operating East Troy Aviation since 2005. He has been the Editor-at-Large for “World Airshow News” magazine
