----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any
advice in this forum.]----

Well stated, Greg. It would be nice if this could be
the final word on this subject thread.

Paul

--- Greg Bullough <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm
> before following any advice in this forum.]----
> 
> 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
> 
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