Hi Ed,
There were TWO retractable Ercoupes..possibly more.
Your reference to "...the retractible gear Coupe" is misleading, as is
Larry Kruljac's commentary on the photo of 93541. The combination
would lead a reader to believe there was only one retractable, and that
this is it; which is incorrect.
My emails of April 9th stated the differences, but to recap: the Erco
retractable (which is described by Fred Weick in Saletri's "Touch of
Class" had the trailing arm and oleo main gear and a fully articulated
nose gear that folded up. I have Erco factory pictures of this plane
and it's gear exposed and in various positions of testing, retract,
extension and in flight. This is NOT the plane Kruljac restored.
The Met-Co-Aire design used a straight "spring" main landing gear and
swung the production nose strut up and back in an arc to "nest" in a
pocket in or behind the control panel. There may have been one or two
Carlsbad Coupe experimental installations of this arrangement (pictures
I have are not that clear) but these other airframes were "standard"
F-1A specification when they went into private ownership.
Best Regards,
WRB
--
On Apr 23, 2009, at 09:55, Ed Burkhead wrote:
In hunting for photos of a split elevator, I bumped into this photo of
the retractable gear Coupe:
http://ercoupe.net/PhotoAlbum.html and click on N93541.
Notice how the nose gear doesn’t completely retract. According to the
discussion of a week or two back, this is an actual retractable Coupe
prototype.
Ed
