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Coupers,

Well, I've got my eye on this coupe that's about a hundred miles from me.
I haven't seen the plane in person yet, but I've seen a number of
pictures.  I need some advice.  Up front, I'm a student pilot training in
Cessnas.  I will get my license, and I want a plane, but my budget is
pretty low, I'm pretty much limited to a low end 152.  Or a coupe.

I've been fascinated by the coupe since reading "Stick and Rudder"  which
makes many references to it being a revolutionary plane (at the time the
book was written, I belive in the 50s, it really was revolutionary).  I
like the convertable aspect.  I think it looks great.  The visibility
looks awesome, and I'm not hard-core about the idea of a rudder.  And, of
course, there's the babe magnet angle:

http://bassace.com/ercoupe/babemagnet.htm

This coupe i'm looking at is a fix-er-upper.  That fine with me, I think
I'd have fun making it airworthy.  Everything that's been described to me
about the the plane sounds really good, the only work it seems to need is
some panel/avionics work (which I can do), possibly some engine work since
it hasn't been flown in 10 years (I might be able to do), and fixing some
corrosion damage on the right wing spar.  The corrosion is what worries
me.

I've been sent a couple pictures of the corrosion.  They can be seen,
along with all the other pics I have, at:

http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/coupe.html

It doesn't look too bad to me, but to be honest I don't know what I'm
looking at.  Does this look major to anyone?  If the damage is extensive,
is this something I can easily replace?  I searched for 'spar' at
univair's site and got a few hits back, but I don't know what I'm looking
for.  Is corrosion like this indicitive of a more widespread corrosion
problem?

Thanks for any tips you might have,

-Michel

PS I was telling my instructor about the history of the coupe, and the
lack of rudders, and he was shocked.  He said, how do you land it in a
crosswind?  And I told him you crabbed it.  He didn't like the answer to
that, but then I pointed out to him that a 747 is designed to crosswind
crab much more than the coupe because the outboard engines are so low to
the ground, a wing down landing would cost you a couple million bucks; the
pilots only have something like a four degree margin of error.

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