Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s a famous saying, but more than ever, it seems perfectly true. And one thing that humans have striven to do for a long time is to capture the power of flight.

The Piper Super Cub is a nimble favorite of Alaska bush pilots who land on and take off from gravel bars and mountaintops. Engineers who designed the plane in the 1940s found a simple model that still ...