Search Results for: Ercoupe

It was a typical spring day in Minnesota, warm and clear at last, but with a brisk south wind blowing across the runway. I’d just driven 45 minutes to fly the Cub for the first time since November, and I thought that the wind was still within the plane’s capability. Once I broke ground and […]

The service was at a Presbyterian church in a small town east of Cincinnati — about a 30-minute flight in the Cessna 180. I had planned to fly there and commandeer the airport’s retired police car, but my airplane wouldn’t start. When I jumped in and “cranked,” it wouldn’t fire — odd, because it was […]

As a child, Jessica Cox wasn’t allowed to climb the slide at the playground. Born without arms, she was limited — not by her own abilities, but by protective grown-ups who told her, “Oh, you can’t do that.” “I wanted to be up high,” Cox said, but because she had no way of holding onto […]

I was introduced to the art of buying and selling flying machines on a spring afternoon in 1965, standing next to an airplane salesman who’d just closed a deal on an AT-6 at Lunken Airport. The sound from that round engine as the buyer departed Runway 21R was glorious, but when it passed almost directly […]

A few weeks ago I flew the Cessna 180 to a nearby grass strip to give a sport pilot practical in a man’s ­Pietenpol Air Camper. Coincidentally, somebody else had just sent me an old Antique Airplane Association magazine. The “Our Lady Antiquer” section in this January-February 1968 issue featured “brand new AAA Member 9010, […]

Well, I did it again. No, not crash, just piss somebody off. An old flatbed trailer parked behind a fence and piled with remnants of a pranged flying machine caught my eye as I drove down Airport Road to pull ’72B out of the hangar and go flying. I’d seen the trailer before and assumed […]

We were flying from Oakland down to San Luis Obispo for lunch. On Oakland Center frequency, the controller was quizzing a Skylane every minute or so: Oakland Center: Cessna Two Three Quebec, thats a 78 182?

Last month in this space we tackled “Proper Rudder Use,” pointing out that in many situations involving angles of attack (AoA) at or near the stall, rudder and not aileron should be the control used to maintain both heading and a wings-level attitude. We also explored how rudder is used to compensate for adverse yaw, and presented a simple exercise pilots can use to demonstrate both its proper and improper application.

You never forget your first love, especially the first airplane that captured your heart and ignited a passion for aviation forever. Take a look at the Flying editors and the story of first airplane loves. And feel free to tell us what your first love was down in the comments below! ** ** Isabel Goyer: […]

It was late January 1962 and my sister Mary and I had been taking flying lessons for about a month, but I don’t think either of us had soloed yet. The Ercoupe — loaned to us by an incredibly generous friend — had sat forlornly in the weeds for some time, so there were issues: […]