Pilots and their Aircraft Jack's 1946 Ercoupe 

I was wounded in Vietnam in 1968 and came home a paraplegic. A friend took me for a ride in his Cessna 150 and told me about the Ercoupe having no rudder pedals that I could fly. I found an Ercoupe 1946 N87101. I would roll my wheelchair to the back of the left wing. Get out of the chair and slide myself up to the cockpit. From there I could pick myself up and let my butt drop in first and then my legs. I soloed in eight hours and went on to fly the plane for ten years. I lost my medical card due to high blood pressure, but my wife and I had a son around the same time late 70's so it worked out o.k. I am 79 yrs old today in good health and still have high B/P. Some of the best yrs of my life was flying the Ercoupe. I always like to watch Ercoupe videos on RU-vid.

I've had my 1946C model and have loved flying it. I have painted it in 1941/42 US Army Air Corp colors.

Nice work Mike, great little plane.

Very cool. Interesting, too, that at 3.51 minutes the underside of the right wing shows the wing ribs through the fabric covering. I've never noticed that before on other coupes.

It is indeed a beautiful aircraft and Jack is a super guy too!!

Really nice aeroplane. Thanks for posting.

Great video - unique aircraft!

Nice photography. I grew up seeing these at my local airport in the 1960's in Minnesota, USA. Saw one yesterday as a display aircraft at the entrance of the Lakeway, TX USA airfield, no longer flying.

Thanks chaps. Lovely aircraft. Good job on the camera Mike.

I grew up in my dads '46 415C. Good pilot but terrible teacher. Odd to think, that Ercoupe was a better teacher than its pilot. I love Ercoupes.

The first time I was in an ercoup was when I was about 3 years old.

Does the ercoupe have retractable landing gear?

It's a pretty little thing . . !

Here's the world's only twin Ercoupe (1946) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QDsMTVu2Yn8.html&pp=ygUMdHdpbiBlcmNvdXBl

Extremely safe...Sure. One of the worst safety records per mile flown. We had 3 of them and survived. Actually of the 3 Ercoupes only 1 is still flying. The others were crashed. Such BS. about marketing the Ercoupe after the war. The Ercoupe was flying prior to WW2. The main marketing spin was that it was the most safe aircraft. NTSB in the 1970's proved the Ercoupe among the most dangerous aircraft flying. And now Ercoupe is almost 70 years old. The designer Fred Weick, stated when the Ercoupe was 50 years old it needed to be flown very carefully as it was getting stressed beyond his design limits. This is now the year 2014. Do the math. The airplane broke apart in flight while maneuvering. The pilot and a passenger were on a local flight and did not return. The wreckage was located strewn over an area of grassy hills. The wings and empennage sections were found separate from the main fuselage. The owner of the airplane had flown with the pilot just prior to the accident flight and reported that the pilot had been doing aileron rolls. The airplane had flown about 4 hours since its annual inspection. Prior to that time, the airplane was damaged during a hard landing and sat, unrepaired, for 2 years. Post accident examination of the airframe revealed extensive corrosion through the wing walk areas and wing spar center section, with corrosion affecting at least 20 rivets that secure the web to the upper spar cap. A Safety Board metallurgist determined that the area of the wing spar center section corrosion could not have been detected through current inspection methods and procedures. The critical buckling stress on the upper spar cap was several times as high as the estimated stress carried by the upper spar cap in straight and level flight, which indicates the failure most likely occurred in a steep turn or other high load maneuver. The collapse of the spar could only occur when enough rivets had corroded to allow the disconnected part of the spar cap to reach its critical buckling strength. Ercoupe Service Bulletin

Rubbish explanation

It is indeed a beautiful aircraft and Jack is a super guy too!!