Ercoupe

On Mar 9, 4:23 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
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

The A36 Bonanza has aileron-rudder interconnects to minimize the pedal
coordination required.

It took a while to get used to this "feature."

All it does is make x-wind landings a bit more challenging than they
should be as the pilot is fighting bungee pressure while applying
rudder for slips. You lose the feel and have to depend on visual cues.

In no way insurmountable, but just doesn't help all that much.


Dan