N428PB

N428PB is a Piper Aircraft PA-14 Family Cruiser, a single-engine piston aircraft operated by VANDER MOLEN WILLIAM L. SkyMeter has tracked 66 flights totalling 32 hours of airtime via ADS-B across 2 callsigns. The most frequent segment is KZ98 to 61D. Service window in our records spans 390 days. Of those flights, 4 (6.1%) carry at least one detected incident — go-around, unstable approach, stall warning, or runway excursion. The Piper Aircraft PA-14 Family Cruiser has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,850 lb, light wake category.

About the Piper Aircraft PA-14 Family Cruiser

The Piper PA-14 Family Cruiser is a high-wing, single-engine taildragger built between 1947 and 1949 as Piper's answer to the postwar general aviation boom. Designed as a four-seat family aircraft with a more spacious cabin than the popular J-3 Cub, the PA-14 featured a 115-horsepower Lycoming O-235 engine and a distinctive rounded fuselage that offered genuine cross-country capability for the era. Only about 238 examples were produced before Piper shifted focus to the more successful PA-20 Pacer, making the Family Cruiser a relatively rare sight on the ramp today.

With a cruise speed around 105 knots and a useful load approaching 800 pounds, the PA-14 was a capable tourer for its time, though it never achieved the commercial success Piper hoped for. The type's short production run and the subsequent popularity of tricycle-gear designs meant that Family Cruisers became something of a collector's item among tailwheel enthusiasts. Most surviving examples have been meticulously restored and are prized for their roomy cabins, docile handling, and classic fabric-and-tube construction that harkens back to aviation's golden age.

SkyMeter has tracked flights across airframes and operators, with the largest observed operator.