Prof Ed wrote: "I don't know about you, but I've never looked at my coupe as an aircraft to save money on fuel."
Wayne Woolard responded: I never looked at the knowledge of extending the cruising range of an airplane as an economic endevor, but rather as a safety measure. Anybody can fly an airplane, especially an Ercoupe, but to fly that aircraft with knowledge of it's anomolies and atributes takes finesse. Heck, guys, I've never been in cash so deep I could not consider the economics of flying. The difference between flying around the neighborhood, drilling those holes in the air with nose down at 100 mph and 5.4 gph versus doing the same flight, nose high and slower at 4 gph or less was important to my ability to fly. And, as Wayne said, it's a matter of mastery of the hobby and improving my safety options. By keeping my nose tank as my reserve, I always had 100 miles of emergency range at 100 mph. By slowing down to about 70 mph, that range increased to 120-130 miles. That's a nice option to keep in mind. And, using the techniques previously listed and detailed in "Stick and Rudder", I was several times able to stretch my Coupe's range enough to skip a fuel stop on a long cross country. That saves a minimum of an hour once you count the descent, maneuvering in pattern, taxi, refueling, paying, pit stop, checks, taxiing, takeoff, climb out and climb to cruise altitude. I liked to play test pilot on many of my puttering around days. I'd test pattern techniques, crosswind landing techniques and methods, soft field and crosswind takeoff methods, minimum flying speed behavior, perfect my control coordination with those rudder pedal thingies and play with minimum power level flight. It's fun to master your sport rather than just slam-bang around. But, for puttering around the local area, admiring the farms from above, saving one to two gallons per hour took some of the sting out of cost of some of my flying. Wish I were rich like many of you. Ed Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com/Ercoupe/index.htm East Peoria, Illinois ed -at- edburk???head.??com (remove the ? marks and change -at- to @)
