When they told me last fall that there'd be an Ercoupe convention in Florida, I started marking up my calendar. There was no way I was going to miss the chance to see a bunch of the pretty little birds in one place at the same time. OK, so it rained most of the months of May and June on the east coast, sometimes like the underside of Niagara, but it didn't make any difference. We're talking Ercoupes, here. The only choice was to go.

Weather did hurt attendance; a lot of folks who'd planned to fly their pride and joy to Daytona Beach International were forced to cancel, but around 60 did make it, mostly by car..and at least 7 managed to sneak their planes around the rain.
By the time the convention got underway on June 19th, there were enough airplanes to make a respectable double line at the Jet Services FBO.

Although it turns heads wherever it goes today, the Ercoupe was controversial in the beginning. Fred Weick, the genius who designed it in 1936, was way ahead of his time. Hoping to prevent landing accidents, he designed a flying machine that wouldn't stall or spin. Weick's airplane has tricycle gear, a big low wing with long ailerons, and no pedals for its twin rudders; you steer it like a car. Well, that 'no pedal' deal always stuck in the old timer's craws, according to Skip Carden, who organized the Ercoupe Owner's Club in 1976.
Carden and his wife, Carolyn, (Picture)have pulled together a group of Ercoupe owners from all over the US and Canada, not an easy job when you consider that at one time Ercoupes were not something a pilot talked about in public. "This is a true story," he swears, "they (the Ercoupe owners) would actually wait at night until everybody went home from the airport to go and fly their airplanes because all the tailwheel pilots and pilots with high time always chided them and said, 'Oh, this is a burpcoupe, a HertzUDriveit, ha ha. No rudders," they'd say, "you can't fly a plane with no rudders, bla, bla, bla." Skip says his primary instructor warned him not to buy a 'coupe because it was too easy to fly. He says he replied that "if that's the case, we need more of that," and went out and bought one. His instructor was right in one respect, he says, it is easy to fly. Skip claims that, furthermore, it has no really bad habits and it's fun. Carden's not alone..all Ercoupers preach that sermon.

Click to continue. . .