On Aug 17, 9:33 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

Much of his design innovations have become standard in all planes (an
electric starter, all-metal construction, etc.) and were quite modern for
the time -- but much of them did NOT become standard, meaning that learning
to fly in an Ercoupe is pretty much a developmental dead-end. You'll never
know how to fly a plane with rudder pedals if you train in one that only has
a brake pedal on the floor!


That is what I thought at first as well, but then I got to thinking: I
learned to drive in an automatic, and later learned to drive a stick.
Also, many people learn to fly with fixed gear, and then later go on
to retractable (though as far as I know there is not that much
difference there besides remembering to lower the gear).

In any event, I do not have the guts to buy a plane right now; I am
notoriously cheap (which makes me a REAL genius for taking up flying).