----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- At 09:42 PM 12/6/01 -0500, Mitch Hines wrote:
I am a student pilot and a first time aircraft owner. Last week I bought a '65 Alon Aircoupe A-2 Wow. Good choice! after lurking around this newsgroup and visting the various 'Coupe websites for the last couple of years. The web has really revived interest in our marque. I hope to transistion from the rented 172's to my new Aircoupe this week Amen. It will be interesting. The coupe, in all its forms, is a far more sensitive beast than the 172 is, and you will have to become a more gentle pilot. It also does student-ish things, like steep turns so very well. No flaps, so you will have to plan your approaches. Even if you have rudder pedals, slips to lose altitude are kinda ineffective. And don't get down to that Cessna-esque 70 or 75 MPH on final. At first, approaching at 80 or 85 will seem fast. But you will realize that it is actually easier because the Coupes control better and you don't hang there like a dirigible on final, waiting for something to go wrong... (or next, go to get my instructor checked out in the Aircoupe first). How do you plan to do that? Can he or she fly with an experienced Ercoupe pilot in your area? You can't really go 'by the book' on these birds, especially on approach. The approach numbers tend to be way too low, putting you in a situation where it is all too easy to drop the airplane in HARD. More Ercoupes and Aircoupes die this way... 172s fly on wings. Aircoupes fly on engines. Speed is your friend. Start fast and work yourself slower, but never slower than 75MPH on final (short field). In anticipation of moving over to the Aircoupe, during last weeks ground school on flight planning, my instructor pointed out that the POH for the Alon (which is much thinner that the POH out of the Cessna) does not have a "Time,Fuel, and Distance to Climb" chart like the POH for 172. I was wondering if anyone had such a chart for an Alon A-2 with the standard C-90 that they could share. Thank god it doesn't, because such things are useless enough in a 172. How often do you duplicate the conditions in the chart? Besides, airplane manufacturers lie. A lot. Or they use super-human test pilots whose performance you or I will never duplicate. In a Coupe, a little weight change is a much larger part of the percentage, and you have only 75-100HP, not 150. So a bit of weight makes a bigger difference in rate of climb for given fuel burn. It's a lot safer to be super-pessimistic. Figure you can only do 400FPM in the Alon, and assume you'll be burning maybe 7GPH doing it. You'll never run out of gas that way. Look, just be a hopeless pessimist until you really know YOUR plane. To hell with the charts which too often only predict something that never really happens. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiLm.aVzvvT Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
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