Jim,
Ive discussed this personally with Fred Weick and heard him talk about it on other occasions. In retrospect, hardly any of the mush accidents involved a flip-over. Very often, though, while the plane is damaged, the people walk (or at least crawl) away. The accident rate among Coupes comes because Coupe marketing and reputation attract not just good people but also a higher percentage of yahoos with bad judgment. Fred told me that he had underestimated just how important good judgment was to flying safety. The marketing departments advertisements pushed on the theme that anyone could fly. But no matter how inherently safe the airplane is, when you fly it into IFR conditions with no IFR ticket nor instruments or fly it into a hillside, the safe airplane probably wont save you. The Coupe as a plane is quite safe. If you * learn and master flying it, * if you use good judgment on when and where to fly it, * if you dont fly it into a cloud, * if you dont scud run, * if you dont go peak under the weather to see if you can get through, * if you make sure you have fuel in the tanks, then the Coupe will be very safe. Yeah, if you have a stall mush accident onto soft ground you could have a flip over. But why would you fly a plane without learning about and practicing its low-speed behaviors? Duh! True, even a good forced landing into a plowed field thats muddy could produce a flip over. That is rare but it has happened. Ask Wayne Woolard for the story, sometime. My one forced landing was into a plowed field but the temp was -5°F. Even though there was 5-8 inches of compacted snow on top of the plowed dirt, there was no hint of any tendency to nose over. Me, I love Coupes. Ed Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com/Ercoupe/index.htm East Peoria, Illinois ed -at- edburk???head.??com (remove the ? marks and change -at- to @)
