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As some of you know, after making some minor modifications to my
Ercoupe to make it work for my disability, today was to be my first
flight lesson. I never got off the ground and have some questions.
The plane was flown to me by it's former owner and parked in early
October. It ran great. We spent 6-8 weeks preparing it for me. New
throttle handle, trim tab handle seat back modification, new PTT
switch, etc. We never started it.
Today we tried to start it and it would not turn over. I tried my
new Black & Decker Battery device we discussed on this list a week or
so ago. I had a sneaking suspicion it might have a low battery after
sitting for a few weeks, so after the recommendation on the list, I
bought one. I did nothing. After poking around a bit, I tried a
traditional jump and it started right up.
We let it run 10 minutes or so and noticed the alternator circuit
breaker was off. We re-set it. At this point we noticed radio
issues. We could hear the tower, but not transmit. If we revved the
hell out of it (figuratively) we could weakly transmit, but ground
could not understand us well enough to proceed.
For obvious reasons we aborted and I'll have FSS Service center take
a look tomorrow. My questions are:
1. Could the very low battery do all of this?
2. Even if the battery was very, very low, once it ran awhile
wouldn't the radios work just fine?
3. Any thoughts to why the breaker was off?
4. I noticed the "primer" in the cockpit leaked a bit when using it.
Is this just a gasket or O ring?
5. My instructor turn off the fuel shut-off under the ignition
switch. It continued to run and run and.... He finally used the mags
to shut the engine down. He mentioned he never does this in other
craft. He usually runs the fuel out and it quits. He was not
comfortable shutting it off like this What did we do wrong?
Continuing to learn...
Kim Blackseth
N2332H
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