The Cheshire Cat takes flight

When Mike Daniel decided to build an airplane, he knew he wanted something special.

And he got it — the Cheshire Cat, a Carbon Cub FX-3 with a unique wrap that includes an augmented reality feature sure to be a showstopper on the ramp of any general aviation airport.

The plane represents Mike’s vision for expanding the options in general aviation as far as design and reaching out to those who haven’t yet discovered the wonderland of flight.

“The opportunities in general aviation are just way greater than most people realize,” he says. “There’s so much to be inspired by in general aviation.”

Mike, who is based at Truckee-Tahoe Airport (KTRK) in California, has been a pilot since 2018, but says he’s always loved aviation.

“I have a passion for it, but I never really knew where my place was,” the 43-year-old pilot says.

That led him to “march” down to the airport in 2018 to figure out how to get his private pilot certificate and enter the world of aviation.

“It didn’t take long until I realized that backcountry aviation and the off-airport stuff was what I really gravitated to,” he said.

After earning his private ticket in 2019, he got his tailwheel endorsement soon after.

Then, like so many other new pilots, there came a period when he didn’t fly much “because I just couldn’t afford to rent planes,” he says.

“It was crazy,” he adds. “I just loitered around the field way too much.”

Next up for the new pilot: Get his own airplane.

He decided to build a CubCrafters Carbon Cub FX-3 experimental airplane using the Yakima, Washington-based company’s builder assist program.

But as anyone who has secured a spot in a builder assist program knows, there’s a long wait until your plane is ready to be delivered. For Mike it was two-and-a-half years.

It was during that time he found himself thinking about what he wanted his airplane to look like and represent.

“I knew I wasn’t going to produce another aircraft with a stripe and call it a day,” he says. “I started thinking conceptually about what I wanted to do with this plane.”

His mind immediately went to one of his favorite stories, “Alice in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll.

He recalls that when his daughters were born, it came to him that “my role in life is to be the Cheshire Cat and they’re my little Alices. I’m just here to give them guidance when needed through this world and their Wonderland, whatever they make it to be.”

Those thoughts carried on when he thought about flying his new airplane.

“There’s actually a quote in chapter six of the book where Alice is wandering through Wonderland and she’s flustered and she bumps into the Cheshire Cat and she says, ‘Oh, Cheshire Cat. I’m so glad to see you. Can you tell me which way I ought to go from here?’ The Cheshire Cat says, ‘Well, that depends a great deal on where you’re trying to get to,’ and Alice says, ‘Well, I don’t much care where,’ and he says, ‘Well, then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.’”

“That interaction is basically what this aircraft is all about,” he explains. “It’s about just going and exploring and not really having an end destination, then turning around and going the other way and just letting the world be your Wonderland. As I kept thinking about it, Cheshire Cat was the concept I wanted to do with the plane. I wanted it to be my Cheshire Cat and I wanted it to be the guiding force to take me through Wonderland.”

Even the tail number, N665CC, is related to Alice in Wonderland: The first six represents the sixth chapter of the book, the 65 the year 1865 when the book was first published, and CC for Cheshire Cat.

Once that was decided, it was time to figure out how the airplane would look.

Mike, who has a background in action sports, including skateboarding and snowboarding, now runs his own design consulting firm, so he had the experience and skills to back up his ideas.

He began reaching out to people he had met through his previous life in action sports to see if he could logistically pull off a wrap for the aircraft.

Not one to sit by idly, he also developed a 3D rendering and mock-up of what he wanted the airplane to look like. That led him to the idea of an interactive vinyl wrap for the airplane.

He reached out to an old colleague he met while doing some work for Red Bull to see who would be best to create a wrap for the Cub. That person led him to another person who eventually led him to Erik Bond, who owns Spin Imaging in Long Beach, California.

Bond, whose day job involves million-dollar contracts to wrap commercial airliners and Richard Branson’s spaceships, was intrigued by Mike’s project and agreed to help.

Over the next few years, the two continued to talk. Erik introduced Mike to Greg Simkins, an artist who goes by the name Craola, who also agreed to work on the project, noting he’d never had his art on an airplane before.

“We just had the dream team with Erik, who understands down to the very last detail how to wrap airplanes, and Greg, who was responsible for the art,” Mike says. “Then we just moved forward. I mean, it took months and months to get the positioning of the art just right on the airplane.”

Not content for a 2D experience, Mike added another element to the art on the plane: A QR code that when scanned creates an augmented reality experience where the cat “jumps off” the airplane, coming to life with a giant smile.

Mike’s whole intention, he said, was to show there’s bigger ideas and concepts that can go into general aviation.

“Inspiring general aviation in new ways that are relevant to the youth these days — as well as older folks — was really important to me,” he explains. “I’m trying to take what I’ve learned in my professional life, and apply it to aviation in new, cool, relevant ways — all the while inspiring different ways of thinking and executing within the world of aviation.”

As he continued to evolve these ideas, Mike wanted to reach an even broader audience.

Rather than contact companies in the general aviation space, he began to reach out to some of the brands he uses in his everyday life, such as Wild Tonic, a kombucha brand that he “buys every day,” Big Sur Bar, which makes healthy snack bars, and Vans — not the iconic kit aircraft company but the lifestyle brand that produces clothes and shoes, the ones Mike wears when he flies.

When he got someone from those companies on the phone, he’d start his pitch: “I’ve got this bush plane. General aviation and backcountry flying is a perfect market that you guys have probably never thought about. Would you ever get behind this?”

Those companies said yes — which means they agreed to have their logos on the plane, but they didn’t give Mike any money to promote the brands.

And that’s OK with Mike.

“It’s about promoting some of these brands that have never really had a footprint anywhere in general aviation and, more specifically, backcountry aviation,” he explains.

Time to build

Once all the artwork was planned, it was finally time to build the airplane. Mike headed to Washington state in January 2022 to begin the build with help through the company’s builder assistance program.

“I went up, sank a bunch of rivets, learned everything about the jigs, and just watched a lot of the process and helped out as much as you do with the builder assist,” he reports. “It was a really great process and really neat to see the assembly line and how professional everything is.”

The plane was completed after two build sessions, which were spread out due to supply chain problems that plagued most American companies in 2022.

Finally the plane was complete and ready to be delivered by Aug. 15, 2022.

While Mike had every intention of doing the first flight himself, he found himself running up against Erik’s deadline to wrap the airplane. That meant it had to be in Compton, California, by Aug. 21.

“I was supposed to go up and do the fly-off myself, but I didn’t have the hours in the aircraft to do that without going up and training,” he says.

He called a friend, Bruce Graham, who “knocked off” the fly-off in three or four days, then flew the airplane to Truckee, where Mike packed it up with everything needed to do the wrap.

The plane then went to Compton, where it took about a week to wrap it.

On Aug. 28, the plane was ready to go and Mike finally got a chance to get his first flight in his new airplane along with his friend Ben Hodges, a CFI.

He followed that first flight with additional transition training from Hodges and another CFI, Kevin Quinn, who is well-known in the backcountry aviation world.

A few months after those first flights, Mike’s flight hours are up to about 250.

“I’m still a very low-hour pilot, but I’m cranking that up every day,” he says.

It helps that his family is behind his passion for aviation, he says, including his youngest daughter, Molly, 9, who loves flying.

“She’ll take any opportunity to jump in the plane, go fly, and grab the stick,” he says.

Her older sister, Tyler, 11, not so much.

“She couldn’t care less about flying unless she’s going to a Golden State Warriors game,” he says with a laugh.

His wife, Erica, has grown more interested in flying the more she’s learned about general aviation. Mike admits he “talks her ear off” about all things aviation, so she really had no choice but to learn about backcountry flying.

In fact, now that Erica is more comfortable with flying, she’s expressed a wish for a plane that can hold the whole family.

“And I’m thinking, ‘oh great, here we go. I already can’t afford this one and now we need a second one,’” he says with a laugh.

In the meantime, the tandem two-seat Carbon Cub is kept busy giving rides to each family member in turn, as well as friends and colleagues.

In fact, Mike has started his own YouTube Channel where he takes someone up for a flight and they tell their own stories about their adventures. The first features Jim Zellers, who shares his story of the first and only known snowboard descent of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

Next up for Mike and the Cheshire Cat? More flying, of course, a lot more flying. He’s planning on taking it to fly-ins and showing it off, with the first being the Buckeye Air Fair in Arizona Feb. 17-19, 2023.

So if you see Mike and the Cheshire Cat on the ramp at your airport or by a river in the backcountry or at a fly-in, don’t hesitate to come up, pull out your phone, and see the Cheshire Cat jump off the plane.

He’ll be happy to share his adventures in Wonderland with you. Follow along at Curiouser.cc.