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At 12:44 PM 4/11/01 -0400, GW wrote: >It is a relatively unsafe bird. Relative to what? To a 7AC? No. To a 172? Maybe. But maybe also it has to do with the critical part, the nut that holds the wheel. You can't get behind the power curve on a stubby-wing airplane, be it a Tri-Pacer, or an Ercoupe, or a fat-wing Cherokee, or a Grumman AA1. If you do, you're going to hit the ground hard. But you'll have the same result in a Bonanza, a Mooney, or a Comanche, or you'll have some variation on the theme. Similarly, if you leave it in the weeds (as too many Ercoupe owners have), don't maintain it (as too many Ercoupe owners haven't) and fly it once every six months (as too many Ercoupe owners do) yeah, it's unsafe. Too many people buy Ercoupes on price alone, with no clue as to how to maintain an airplane, and with the illusion that the plane can be flown by an 11-year-old with no training, and they bend the bird or themselves. > Even the insurance company knows it. Those people USED to do the same thing to Cubs and T-Craft, but now they've been winnowed out by price and by Darwin, and now those models are mostly in the hands of people who maintain them and fly them properly. Insurance companies go on the basis of average for the model. More Ercoupes end up in the hands of relatively clueless low-skill owners these days than do super-classics like T-Craft, Cubs, and Luscombes. That doesn't mean that, all other things being equal, a GIVEN Ercoupe is less safe than a given T-Craft. It depends on the owner and operator. If you were an accident waiting to happen in the Ercoupe, you're an accident waiting to happen in your T-Craft. Only thing is, instead of being here to say 'in my hundreds of Ercoupe landings I've only porpoised a few times I don't know why it happened' you WON'T be here to say something like 'in my hundreds of T-Craft landings I've only spun on the turn to final a couple of times, and don't know why it happened.' > It also costs too much to fix. Look: if you built a new Ercoupe from scratch today, it would cost around $70,000 (right, Syd?). So why, after you bend a big percentage of the sheet metal and structure, do you piss and moan about an $11,000 repair bill? Have you wrapped a Mercedes around a telephone pole lately, and checked out the estimate? Bang that T-craft up in a ground loop, tear off a wing and collapse the gear, then talk to us about bills. > Insurance companies seem to not make mistakes when judging the risks. True, and so long as we have pilots who fly with loose fabric on the wings and who aren't up to the demands of flying even the Ercoupe, our risk pool will be high. > Funny, I am not the only one who has said bad things about it. That must make it so, then. Look... ...every aircraft has its foibles. You can't fly a 172 out of 10,000 foot density altitude with four adults and expect to miss the trees at the end of the 2400 runway. So what? > The plane has an awful limit on the elevator and that has >given it a bad record, How so? That is the very thing that keeps it from stall-spinning! Yes, it makes it possible to land hard IF YOU SCREW UP, but you walked away from that screw up. >as has two-axis control, whether you zealots like it or not, Again, how so? Given the idiots that have managed not to kill themselves in 2-Axis Ercoupes, I'd say it's working pretty well. >the numbers don't lie. But they are subject to misinterpretation by individuals who are trying to rationalize around the possibility that they may very well have screwed up. >It is a fact that it can be run off the runway by good pilots. Yes, good pilots sometimes make mistakes. Running off the runway is a pretty common one. In many types. I've seen it done in a 172. >It has happened at least twice in the past month. Nationally, there have been a lot more mistakes than that in the past month. In many types. >They also have hard landings and they continue to believe Erco hype 50 >years later which leads them to fly in winds no 800 pound airplane should be >in. Oddly, I agree with you there. I have no interest in trying to land in a 25MPH crosswind. I fly for fun. That's not fun for me. > Larry, I will forgive you for implying that I am a bad pilot since I >have know since the day you joined the list that you were a moron, Glen, Larry's opinion has no bearing on whether you actually ARE a bad pilot. However, your persistent attempts to blame the Ercoupe's design for your accident suggests that there may indeed be a problem with your attitude. From the beginning some of the things you've said here on the mailing list have caused some of us to wonder if you were going to get yourself killed in your airplane. Or when. For us, your accident comes as no surprise. That said, there aren't many of us who won't admit that the same thing could happen to us tomorrow. If we screw up. And we must might. Greg __________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from this list please send mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiLm.aVzvvT Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. 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