Ercoupe

wrote:
On Mar 10, 9:07 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 8:00 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 6:36 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 6:08 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 5:09 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 1:18 pm, wrote:
If you can stand a single holer, there's this (with rudder peds):
http://www.theminicoupe.com/_wsn/page2.html
Not many flying I think. Looks fun though.
Now that's.. mini.
Dan
Mooney made something way back when called the Mite. I flew it a couple
of times. That thing was small; little single seater; not a bad aileron
roll either :-))
--
Dudley Henriques
The mite! I think there's one at my home field (or so I'm told --
never saw it fly).
How about the Bede-5?
;-)
Dan
Never flew the BD5, but my friend started to build one. He got caught up
in the mess that was Jim Bede's engine woes. Never finished it.
Corkey Fornof is an old friend. Cork flew the BD5J through the hangar in
the James Bond movie "Occtopussy"
--
Dudley Henriques
Now that was an awesome scene...
When I was a kid there's was only one plane for me -- the BD-5J.
Thank God for maturity!
Dan
Cork says the hardest thing about the scene was figuring the shock wave
bounce back off the interior hangar walls as he flew the airplane
through. His team brought in a physics whiz (not Tucker BTW :-) who ran
the numbers and came up with the exact amount they had to open the side
windows to keep the shock from bouncing back on the aircraft as he went
through. If that happened, he would have been killed.
You're right, it was a great stunt. Cork has done a lot of them in
different movies. He and his dad Bill Fornof were both charter members
of the IFPF which I founded. Great people the Fornofs.
--
Dudley Henriques
IFPF -- do you know Buck Buchanan?
I don't think so. IFPF was the International Fighter Pilots Fellowship.
Google IFPF History for a skinny.
--
Dudley Henriques
oops..ok..wrong group...
Found the link. Quite an elite group!
Doug Bader?!?
An old friend and charter member of the IFPF. Don't know if you are
asking who he was or not, but Douglas is well known as the legless ace
of the Battle of Britain.

To me, he was much more than that. One of the finest people I have ever
known, Douglas devoted his entire life to helping the physically
impaired, especially amputee children.

--
Dudley Henriques- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

WOW.

I just became familiar with Douglas Bader's contributions during the
Battle of Britain by fiinishing off Peter Townsend's "Duel of Eagles"
just last night (it was a months long effort.) I believe Bader was
later shot down and spent some time at least breifly in the custody of
Adolf Galland. Adolf writes about it in his book "The First and The
Last". IIRC there's a section in that book where the Germans asked the
English to send over a pair of prosthetic legs for Bader -- and they
gave a location. The English came over and bombed the crap out of the
SOBs. Then they dropped a canister with the legs in them after they
were done.

Bader also tried to convince Galland to let him try out flying an ME
109. Galland wasn't quite convinced. He reports thinking that Bader
would have definitely made a run for it.

I don't remember if Bader later escaped. Galland reported that he was
constantly conniving to do so. And furthermore had nothing but
contempt for the "gentlemanly" business of shooting at someone in the
air and then giving them the four star honor treatment once on the
ground. I dunno of course, I wasn't there. I wasn't born for another
twenty years!

Bader is definitely an inspirational figure.

Douglas and Galland became quite good friends during the filming of the
"Battle of Britain" where both of them were serving as technical
advisers. Douglas visited with Galland at his home in Bonn and flew with
him in Galland's Bonanza.

The prison where doglas was confined was Colditz.


--
Dudley Henriques

On Mar 10, 3:32 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
xyzzy wrote:
On Mar 9, 8:23 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 9, 7:20 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dan wrote in news:42b5622c-9f2a-4376-814a-
:
On Mar 9, 7:07 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
It's part of the STC to remove it when it's converted to a Pacer, but
it
hadn't been done for some reason.
Bertie
Thought so.
I just wonder who came up with that Tri Pacer gear...
=
Who came up with it? Probably Pug Piper. It was just to meet the demand
for more milk stools in the fifties. A number of airplanes were modified
by the factories to trike configuration. the C 170 the 180 and 140, for
instance and the particularly unfortunate WACO N.
Bertie
Bertie
Yikes.. that was a selling point? It looks like it's about to tip over
if the Line boy sneezes...
I've flown the Ercoupe. Not much to it really. It was fun running the
side windows down and flying along with my arm out on the edge of the
cockpit sort of like in a car.
The landings were a bit different if you had any crosswind at all, but
easily doable in the crab. Take off was the same. As soon as you broke
ground, it weather vaned into the wind with aileron. Sort of a "spooky"
little airplane but it flew quite well and was quite fast for its day.

The one I flew didn't have the later rudder capability. Never flew the Alon.

--
Dudley Henriques

I flew one once and one thing I remember is that taking off in a left
crosswind took some getting used to. Had to bank it farther right
than most people will be comfortable with that low, to keep it
straight. Because you couldn't correct for the weathervaning + left
turning tendency with the rudder. Yes, I know the left turning
tendency was supposedly designed out of it. Not. At takeoff power
it's still there. Of coruse the one I was flying was a 75 hp model
that had been modified with the c-90, so that might have something to
do with it

Never had these problems. I'm sure you meant a left bank into a left
crosswind and not a right. :-))

No. weathervaning makes the plane want to go left. The left turning
tendency makes it want to go left. Since there are no rudder pedals,
the only way to correct it is to bank right. Not very comfortable
raising the upwind wing so low....

I never noticed any noticeable left turning tendencies in the Coupe.
PFactor was no issue as the basic attitude of the propeller was fairly
level with the relative wind on takeoff. Not enough vertical surface
back there for much spiraling slipstream effect. Of course there's
always a bit of gyroscopic precess as you rotate in pitch, but nothing
of note really in the Coupe. Torque correction is in roll anyway, and
you had ample aileron on the airplane.

The propeller is canted 3 degrees from straight ahead which is
supposed to counteract left turning tendency, but at full power and
low speed it still has some, especially with the c-90.

It was different all right, but no big deal at all on these issues.

Yeah, if I flew it more I might have gotten used to it. Only flew it
for about 1/2 hour in the pattern. It was fun, just had to get used
to its quirks.

On Mar 10, 8:04 pm, Phil J wrote:


There's some video of an Ercoupe crosswind landing starting at 5:42 in
this clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ob7toBLP2I

Now that's some side load!

The V tail sure looked purdy...

I was practicing Touch and gos right seat yesterday with a 90 degree
gusty x-wind (8-15 knots) in a C172. I'm glad no one had a camera on
me!

:-)

Dan

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

xyzzy wrote:
On Mar 10, 3:32 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
xyzzy wrote:
On Mar 9, 8:23 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dan wrote:
On Mar 9, 7:20 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dan wrote in news:42b5622c-9f2a-4376-814a-
:
On Mar 9, 7:07 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
It's part of the STC to remove it when it's converted to a Pacer, but
it
hadn't been done for some reason.
Bertie
Thought so.
I just wonder who came up with that Tri Pacer gear...
=
Who came up with it? Probably Pug Piper. It was just to meet the demand
for more milk stools in the fifties. A number of airplanes were modified
by the factories to trike configuration. the C 170 the 180 and 140, for
instance and the particularly unfortunate WACO N.
Bertie
Bertie
Yikes.. that was a selling point? It looks like it's about to tip over
if the Line boy sneezes...
I've flown the Ercoupe. Not much to it really. It was fun running the
side windows down and flying along with my arm out on the edge of the
cockpit sort of like in a car.
The landings were a bit different if you had any crosswind at all, but
easily doable in the crab. Take off was the same. As soon as you broke
ground, it weather vaned into the wind with aileron. Sort of a "spooky"
little airplane but it flew quite well and was quite fast for its day.
The one I flew didn't have the later rudder capability. Never flew the Alon.
--
Dudley Henriques
I flew one once and one thing I remember is that taking off in a left
crosswind took some getting used to. Had to bank it farther right
than most people will be comfortable with that low, to keep it
straight. Because you couldn't correct for the weathervaning + left
turning tendency with the rudder. Yes, I know the left turning
tendency was supposedly designed out of it. Not. At takeoff power
it's still there. Of coruse the one I was flying was a 75 hp model
that had been modified with the c-90, so that might have something to
do with it
Never had these problems. I'm sure you meant a left bank into a left
crosswind and not a right. :-))

No. weathervaning makes the plane want to go left. The left turning
tendency makes it want to go left. Since there are no rudder pedals,
the only way to correct it is to bank right. Not very comfortable
raising the upwind wing so low....

I never noticed any noticeable left turning tendencies in the Coupe.
PFactor was no issue as the basic attitude of the propeller was fairly
level with the relative wind on takeoff. Not enough vertical surface
back there for much spiraling slipstream effect. Of course there's
always a bit of gyroscopic precess as you rotate in pitch, but nothing
of note really in the Coupe. Torque correction is in roll anyway, and
you had ample aileron on the airplane.

The propeller is canted 3 degrees from straight ahead which is
supposed to counteract left turning tendency, but at full power and
low speed it still has some, especially with the c-90.

It was different all right, but no big deal at all on these issues.

Yeah, if I flew it more I might have gotten used to it. Only flew it
for about 1/2 hour in the pattern. It was fun, just had to get used
to its quirks.



This is inconsistant with my experience in the Ercoupe.


I experienced little to no left turning tendency in the 90 Ercoupe. In a
crosswind, on rotation, the airplane weathervanes into the wind as a
natural reaction. We flew it in varying wind conditions. I don't recall
any time when opposite aileron was used with the wind. The natural
response in this airplane is to allow the weathervane into the wind
finding the "sweet spot" where the airplane will track and leveling the
wings at that spot.
This is the accepted procedure for crosswind in the Ercoupe as I
remember it. It's almost exactly the same procedure used in aerobatics
when entering a slow roll by the pilot using the adverse yaw to aid in
keeping the nose up following that with top rudder.
Of course the Coupe has no rudder so you're in effect using the two
tools you have to establish crosswind track...the wind, and neutralizing
the wings with aileron.
I can envision no scenario in an Ercoupe where downwind aileron would be
used in a crosswind takeoff. You simply play the weathervane against the
wind then neutralize at the track point. It ain't pretty...but it works.
:-))

--
Dudley Henriques

Phil J wrote:
On Mar 9, 2:31 pm, Dan wrote:
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

There was a group working on a modernized composite kit version.
Don't know if they are still at it or not. Here's a link...

http://www.homebuilt.org/aircraft/ka...aaircraft.html


Phil
Hi Phil;

I didn't have a whole lot of time in the Coupe but I didn't experience
any specific problems with it. It flew well, handled well in the
pattern, and was stable on the approach. Crosswind was "interesting" but
no big deal really.

--
Dudley Henriques

Dan wrote:
On Mar 10, 8:04 pm, Phil J wrote:

There's some video of an Ercoupe crosswind landing starting at 5:42 in
this clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ob7toBLP2I

Now that's some side load!

The V tail sure looked purdy...

I was practicing Touch and gos right seat yesterday with a 90 degree
gusty x-wind (8-15 knots) in a C172. I'm glad no one had a camera on
me!

:-)

Dan

Typical landing for the Ercoupe :-)) The T34 got it right. Most of the
rest corrected out of the crab a bit high and committed a very basic
error. They came out of the windward aileron too far instead of leaving
it in the required slip angle for the wind correction catching the
runway heading with rudder.
This transition for a crosswind is one of the most difficult things to
teach new student pilots. It's a matter of "feeling" the wind as you
exit the crab. Come all the way out with that aileron and you start
sideways. It's fun to watch but can get a bit scary at times :-))

--
Dudley Henriques

Phil J wrote in news:875f835d-861f-4472-80b2-
:

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.


Actually, the flight manual actually said that if you were to high and
needed to scrub off altitude, you should pull the stick back into your
gut and close the throttle. I did it and it does work and is pretty
controllable,but it is very undcomfortable.

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.

I think the mains use rubber donuts, but I'm not sure.


Bertie

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Phil J wrote in news:875f835d-861f-4472-80b2-
:

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.


Actually, the flight manual actually said that if you were to high and
needed to scrub off altitude, you should pull the stick back into your
gut and close the throttle. I did it and it does work and is pretty
controllable,but it is very undcomfortable.
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.

I think the mains use rubber donuts, but I'm not sure.


Bertie
I ate a rubber donut this morning! :-)

--
Dudley Henriques

Dudley Henriques wrote in
:


I ate a rubber donut this morning! :-)


I had a nice one!


Bertie