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Old July 8th 05, 06:22 AM
W P Dixon
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I do believe you got some BS,
An Ercoupe qualifies under the new sport category and will not have to
certified as a LSA. Read the rules it says any LSA or certified aircraft
meeting the requirements of such. Champs, Cubs, Interstate, Taylorcraft,
Luscombe and Ercoupe(among others!) have planes that meet the requirement. I
am training in a Champ right now and it is a certified aircraft, not LSA.
And as far as insurance, well I got a quote today for renters insurance to
cover my little sport pilot self.
The big deal with insurance from all that I am gathering in trying to
find a local plane to rent is simple. Most of the old planes on the "sport
pilot" can fly list are the old taildraggers. And insurance is out of this
world on them for training/rental to student pilots....not just sport
pilots.
As for your Ercoupe if the mod has been done that actually classifies it
as a D model then it is no longer eligible for sport pilot(it's the elevator
mod and increases the gross weight to 1400lbs), and from everything I have
read and the FAA office in Nashville says, it can never be brought back to a
sport pilot eligible plane. So if it is a C or a C/D model you are good to
go. You fly it as a sport pilot , no ringing of bells required.
Several places are training sport pilots in Ercoupes now, one in
Virginia and one in MASS come to mind right off the bat. Places in Georgia
and Ohio are training in Champs. These airplanes still have the original
certificates they had back in the 40's. And they are insured. The place in
Ohio covers their own but requires renters to be insured.
And a CFI can train sport pilots, if you want to get a sport CFI cert go
for it. I think most sport CFI's will mostly be from the ultralight
community, training in fat ultralights.( which DO have to be reclassified as
LSA's.)
You will find alot of people just are not going to read the rules because
they don't want anything to do with it. Even in aviation the old saying"
It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks." has some merit.
Good Luck,
And heck bring that Ercoupe down here !!!!!

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

"n93332" wrote in message
...
" Blueskies" wrote in message
m...
What do you all think of this article?

...no way, I'm not going first!....

http://www.avweb.com/news/atis/189763-1.html

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Even though the insurance company said they would cover me to fly my
Ercoupe under Sport rules, I decided to go ahead and renew my 3rd class
medical so I could fly at night, fly at towered fields, etc. (which I
haven't done since renewing anyways :-(

A month later I took my Ercoupe in for its annual inspection and got to
talking with the mechanic/inspector. He told me that in order for the
plane to be flown by a Sport Pilot, the plane would have to be recertified
as a Sport Class plane, then I would have to get checked out by a Sport
Pilot CFI and any certified pilot that wanted to fly it would also need to
be checked out because it's Sport Class certified. Keeping it certified as
a normal aircraft, any certified (non-sport) pilot can fly it without
needing the CFI checkout.

There aren't many (any?) Sport Pilot CFI's in this area yet. So, I'll
leave my plane certified as normal. Hopefully the FAA will change its
rules a bit on the Sport Pilot and Sport Plane requirements that make it
more automatic to be able to become a sport pilot if your medical expires.
Also make a sport plane be able to use by both Sport pilots and regular
pilots without having to recertify it each time.

I was thinking of getting a Sport Pilot CFI rating added to my private
certificate (see the FAR's, it's possible) but right now it sounds like a
lot of hoops to jump through to do it...

Of course, the information I got from my mechanic/inspector may be total
BS. I haven't found all the answers yet to these in the FAR's, the FAA,
AOPA, or EAA websites.

-Greg B.