Pablo asked: > I'm new to this group and have a friend who is interested in building > an Ercoupe. I searched in the group messages and could not find any > reference to someone having the construction planes. Do they exist? > Are they available?
Pablo, I'm afraid it'd be pretty expensive to build an Ercoupe. First, you'd have to buy the rights to the line from Univair. I'm guessing the price would be somewhere from a hundred thousand to a million dollars. The issue is that the Ercoupe/Aircoupe line is certificated. It bears an FAA certificate. To build Coupes, you need to have the rights to that certificate as well, I think, as approval for manufacture. There is an option to build a look-similar aircraft from modern materials. There's a guy who has been puttering at doing so for several years complicated by lack of money and inhibited by his shop being flooded at one point. You can contact him via the coupecruiser forum on Yahoo Groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coupecruiser/ If you've got the big bucks, perhaps you could join that effort. Building new Ercoupes would probably be prohibitively expensive, so much so that your price would be much higher than 70 year newer designs. If you'd like to restore an existing Ercoupe, that would be great. Find a plane with good metal and spars and dig in. Several members of this forum do this for a hobby. Be aware that a serious restoration could cost $15,000-$35,000 and lots and lots and lots of labor. Much easier would be buying a flying Coupe and making it beautiful. I'm afraid that there is no build-it-yourself option for Coupes other than restoration though some restorations require much, much more than would a 51% experimental aircraft kit. Ed http://edburkhead.com/Ercoupe/index.htm
