Ercoupe

Perhaps someone will know...

Why hasn't the Ercoupe design been repackaged as a kit or LSA? It
seems to be the ideal design for the casual weekend flier (with or
without rudder pedals).

Side by side, sips fuel, low gross weight, proven design, etc.

I'm not interested in buying one (see "slow") but the few people I
know who own or have flown them have nothing but praise for the design
given its mission.



Dan

Dan wrote in news:de3dd05a-a0eb-4337-9a8f-
:

Perhaps someone will know...

Why hasn't the Ercoupe design been repackaged as a kit or LSA? It
seems to be the ideal design for the casual weekend flier (with or
without rudder pedals).

Side by side, sips fuel, low gross weight, proven design, etc.

I'm not interested in buying one (see "slow") but the few people I
know who own or have flown them have nothing but praise for the design
given its mission.


I've flown them, they're awful.



Mooney warmed it up in the sixties with a single Mooney style fin. these
were even spinnable. It was called the Cadet. Very few were sold.



Find whoever owns the rights and knock yourself out. I'd suspect it's
still Mooney, though there might be an associaiton or club who owns the
STC.
If it isn't one of those, it's some old fjukkwit who lives in a trailer
and sells second hand tires. He thinks he's sitting on a goldmine with
the Urp-cup drawings stuffed in his mattress.


Bertie

Bertie

On Mar 9, 3:47 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

I've flown them, they're awful.

Mooney warmed it up in the sixties with a single Mooney style fin. these
were even spinnable. It was called the Cadet. Very few were sold.

Heard of it, never saw one.


Bertie

Awful because?

Dan wrote in news:232d9062-0ff2-468a-82cd-
:

On Mar 9, 3:47 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

I've flown them, they're awful.

Mooney warmed it up in the sixties with a single Mooney style fin.
these
were even spinnable. It was called the Cadet. Very few were sold.

Heard of it, never saw one.

Seen a few. There was one for sale on Barnstormers recently.


Bertie

Awful because?


No rudders. Even the ones built by Alon, which had pedals, didn't have
decent yaw control.

The big problem with them is, they;re 'idiot proof'. When you make
something idiot proof, all you do is breed a better class of idiot.
Idiots are like antibiotic resistant staff infections like that.

Bertie

On Mar 9, 3:58 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Heard of it, never saw one.

Seen a few. There was one for sale on Barnstormers recently.

Bertie

Awful because?

No rudders. Even the ones built by Alon, which had pedals, didn't have
decent yaw control.

The big problem with them is, they;re 'idiot proof'. When you make
something idiot proof, all you do is breed a better class of idiot.
Idiots are like antibiotic resistant staff infections like that.

Bertie

Hmmm..

Good point. The "spin proof" claim would indicate less than full
control authority, which comes in handy from time to time.

I wonder if there's a way to correlate "improved safety features" with
"increased accident rate."

Kinda like riding a bike -- the sense of protection a helmet provides
may encourage risky behavior.

Hmmmm...

Dan

Dan wrote in news:d03993c1-7e24-4102-9767-
:



Good point. The "spin proof" claim would indicate less than full
control authority, which comes in handy from time to time.

I wonder if there's a way to correlate "improved safety features" with
"increased accident rate."

Kinda like riding a bike -- the sense of protection a helmet provides
may encourage risky behavior.


People who buy Ercoupes aren;t really inclined towards risky behaviour.
Well, for the most part they aren't. I knew a guy who buzzed his buddies
house with one and managed to pich up his neighbor's clothesline while
he was at. It was covered in laundry as well.

It's accident rate, when it used to be included in such statistics, was
reasonably low.

There was a kind of mania to build an everyman's airplane in the
thirties. There were three certified that I can think of off the top of
my head. The Ercoupe, whick is th eonly one to make it into any kind of
serious production, the General Skyfarer, which also had twon fins and
no rudder pedals, and the Gwinn Aircar, which was an incredibly strangel
little cabin Bipe. Frank Hawks, the famous racing pilot of the thirties,
died demonstrating one, which was the end of that type. I think a few
Skyfarers were bilt, though. Loked kinda like a Piper Colt with a long
atail and twin fins that could have been lifted straight off the
Ercoupe.
Fred Weick, who was a genius if a bit of a design pervert, designed the
Ercoupe all by himself, and later, he helped design that other breeder
of the pedally challenged, the Cherokee, which is the only other
airplane I know of that can be flown by paraplegics with almost no mods.


Bertie

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 13:06:03 -0700 (PDT), Dan wrote:

On Mar 9, 3:58 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Heard of it, never saw one.

Seen a few. There was one for sale on Barnstormers recently.

Bertie

Awful because?

No rudders. Even the ones built by Alon, which had pedals, didn't have
decent yaw control.

The big problem with them is, they;re 'idiot proof'. When you make
something idiot proof, all you do is breed a better class of idiot.
Idiots are like antibiotic resistant staff infections like that.

Bertie

Hmmm..

Good point. The "spin proof" claim would indicate less than full
control authority, which comes in handy from time to time.

I wonder if there's a way to correlate "improved safety features" with
"increased accident rate."

Kinda like riding a bike -- the sense of protection a helmet provides
may encourage risky behavior.

Hmmmm...

Dan

Dan, lot of info here.

http://www.airventure.org/2007/7sat28/lsa_ercoupe.html
--
Remove numbers for gmail and for God's sake it ain't "gee" either!

On Mar 9, 3:06*pm, Dan wrote:
On Mar 9, 3:58 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Heard of it, never saw one.

Seen a few. There was one for sale on Barnstormers recently.
Bertie

Awful because?

No rudders. Even the ones built by Alon, which had pedals, didn't have
decent yaw control.

The big problem with them is, they;re 'idiot proof'. When you make
something idiot proof, all you do is breed a better class of idiot.
Idiots are like antibiotic resistant staff infections like that.

Bertie

Hmmm..

Good point. The "spin proof" claim would indicate less than full
control authority, which comes in handy from time to time.

I wonder if there's a way to correlate "improved safety features" with
"increased accident rate."

Kinda like riding a bike -- the sense of protection a helmet provides
may encourage risky behavior.

Hmmmm...

Dan

From what I have read, the Ercoupe had a few problems. If you lost
the engine, it didn't glide worth a damn. And if you let it get too
slow on approach it would develope a huge sink rate. If you didn't
speed up, you couldn't flare enough to arrest the sink rate and you
would slam into the ground.

As the years went by and the main gear oleos got old, or when the nose
gear was replaced with a dual-fork strut, they tended to sit too nose-
high on the ground, and that made them more difficult to land,
especially in crosswinds, because the angle-of-attack stayed too high
at touchdown.

Phil

"Dan" wrote in message ...
Perhaps someone will know...

Why hasn't the Ercoupe design been repackaged as a kit or LSA? It
seems to be the ideal design for the casual weekend flier (with or
without rudder pedals).

Side by side, sips fuel, low gross weight, proven design, etc.

I'm not interested in buying one (see "slow") but the few people I
know who own or have flown them have nothing but praise for the design
given its mission.



Dan




fast bird for the power. the oddest thing is you just keep the wings level and maintain the crap all the way to the
ground. flaring out sideways is just plain strange. must be what the b-52 drivers experience. i kept jabbing teh
floorboards trying to kick rudder. hard over aileron right then left then right again and the ball was always
centered...

"Blueskies" wrote in message ...

"Dan" wrote in message ...
Perhaps someone will know...

Why hasn't the Ercoupe design been repackaged as a kit or LSA? It
seems to be the ideal design for the casual weekend flier (with or
without rudder pedals).

Side by side, sips fuel, low gross weight, proven design, etc.

I'm not interested in buying one (see "slow") but the few people I
know who own or have flown them have nothing but praise for the design
given its mission.



Dan




fast bird for the power. the oddest thing is you just keep the wings level and maintain the crap all the way to the
ground. flaring out sideways is just plain strange. must be what the b-52 drivers experience. i kept jabbing teh
floorboards trying to kick rudder. hard over aileron right then left then right again and the ball was always
centered...


should be craB...