Yes, It was “the” Ercoupe – being flown solo by a close friend and student pilot. Does he know how to handle a grass runway landing or what?

Here’s another video – of a Cessna 172 landing on a grass strip in Argyle, NY (1C3). The video is taken from inside the cockpit of the C-172 with fellow pilot, Brian, at the controls.

Jose Gilbert, of Vero Beach, recently uploaded this video to share such a happening. He did a fine job of conveying the spirit of Ercoupers. I found the original link on the Ercoupe Tech Group on Yahoo Groups.

Ercoupe Arrivals at Oshkosh 2008 from Jose Gibert on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

The other day I was perusing a thread entitled, “Biggest Landing Challenge??” on the Purple Board for Pilots. The Purple Board for Pilots, for those not familiar with it, is an online community for pilots to share experiences and commeradarie. Questions are asked and answered, ideas are presented and commented upon, and a good time is had by all. One member expressed his Biggest Landing Challenge as not always landing on the centerline of a runway. Well, I can relate to that, so I joined in the discussion.

I stated: Don’t want to get into the “changes” and challenges of going from the C-172 in which I was re-learning how to fly – to doing my BFR “stuff” in my newly purchased Ercoupe. Going from the 172 to a plane with the wing in the right place (change in perspective), no rudder pedals (no problem with that), but no flaps and a Hershey Bar shaped wing with a sink rate similar to a sack of potatoes – all belongs in a thread (and/or blog post) of its own.

Another pilot stated that he, “…consistently lands left of centreline on wider runways. Not a lot, but always.” He went on to say that on narrow runways he always lands dead-center.

I jumped in addressing “my” centerline idiosyncrasy: “Sooooo…I seem to have developed an opposite “syndrome” at the home-drome. I am using a paved runway of 2000 x 40 feet; and I am consistently left of centerline. Not far left, nearly always just a little bit left. However, fly over to Martin State (MTN) with it’s 7000 x 180 foot runway – and I easily straddle the center paint. Go figure…”

Another pilot mentioned that he read somewhere, “…that people who do this are often trying to put the center of the plane on the center line. What I read was written by some instructor who suggested the solution to this particular problem was telling the pilot to put themselves on the center line rather than the center of the plane.”

That was posted on Thanksgiving Day. And I had about 5 hours of CAVU weather before we were scheduled to be at our Daughter’s home for Thanksgiving Dinner. I figured I would head to the airport and give that advice a try. It wasn’t a radical change – just slightly different perspective on lining up for touchdown.

Here’s the result of that .9 in the air…

OK, so I did a few TOLs yesterday – working up an appetite for that Thanksgiving Dinner. It really did seem to help a bit with putting the centerline in front of “me” – rather than where I perceived the center of the airplane to be. Here is a short video of one of those landings…

It was a beautiful day – cool, crisp and clear. The wind was not strong but it was variable. I flew for nearly an hour and the wind was mostly a crosswind from the west, so in the video I was setting up for a slight drift to the right on final. Turn the camera on and the wind swings around – go figure. We always get a bit of turbulence on final for 28 because of the mixture of trees, fields and buildings. (You should see the “bouncing” on a gusty day.

For perspective on the camera angle…the camera is wedged in next to the compass and is about 3 inches to the right-center of the windshield. The fuel indicator (you can see the shadow move) is about 4 inches to left of center. For reference to that mumbo-jumbo, just look at the head-on shot in the head of this page (at the top).

The wind was about 10-12 knots with gusts to 18 or 20 and from a direction of 300 degrees. That created only a slight crosswind component for Runway 28, which can be seen in the angle of crab during the later part of final approach. However, the x-wind died out at ground level and the Ercoupe straightened out just before contacting the tarmac. You can even hear the tires “chirp” on the soft touchdown. Usually I make greaser landings only when I am alone – but today I have a video to share.

Harford County Airport has one paved runway, two turf runways, and an awesome FBO, Harford Air Services, that takes care of the place. The paved runway 10-28 is 2000 feet long and 40 feet wide. It also has a parallel turf section that is popular with the local glider school. The longer of the turf runways, 01-19, is also 2000 feet long but stretches out to 75 feet wide. I have not yet used the shorter, diagonal turf runway, 14-32, which is only 1600 feet long and 75 feet wide.

The wind was bothering some people today (keeping them grounded) and my flight was definitely bumpy. Those fair-weather cumulus floating at 4500 feet were formed by some strong convective currents; meaning today provided good reason for ALWAYS wearing a seat belt in a small airplane. However, those updrafts sure put smiles on the faces of the glider pilots, who were having a ball this afternoon. The wind certainly blew out the humidity, making the air so clear and you could see for miles and miles. I could even see the skyline of Wilmington, Delaware, nearly 40 miles to the northeast. And at 1800 feet above the ground I could see small details below me. In fact, my eyes kept wandering to the altimeter because the ground looked so clear it was hard to believe I was nearly a third of a mile above it.

Today was one of those wonderful days when it felt good just to get up in the sky. We had just ended a week of fairly miserable weather that an overnight cold front pushed on out to sea. That set up a day perfect for pictures, so I though I would give the video a try.

The video was uploaded at a “smaller size” to make it more efficient for downloading, but I am not happy with the quality. I’ll try to re-build it and upload again at high quality and see if YouTube tailors the streaming to the appropriate connection speed for our viewers (you).

OK, here’s the scoop. I bought the “new” Ercoupe in September and flew it home from Toms River, New Jersey. My Certified Flight Instructor (CFI), Jamie, was with me and we counted the trip as a long “dual” cross country flight. In New Jersey, the winds were blowing about 20 knots, but were not too gusty, and were from a direction that would help us a bit with ground speed for the flight home.

So, we figured that those winds just on kept blowing toward eastern Maryland – for these last two months. And occasionally they bring low ceilings and rain. As in this short ( 6-second) video clip…

In fact, over the last eight weeks, there have been nearly 40 days where flying was “challenging” at best. Oh, there was one stretch of six days with absolutely perfect flying weather. But, alas, during that time I was on a business trip for five of them. I did, however, manage to catch one great flying day when I got back – before the weather headed south again, so to speak.

It has gotten so that whenever I walk into the FBO (Harford Air Services) office, someone asks me if I’ll be taking another trip soon. LOL. Thanks, guys and gals.

Rain, rain go away - come again another day...

This, of course, is an anomaly with fall weather this year, and it will pass. Let’s just hope we get some fine fall flying days before the “chill” of winter gets here. But the cabin heater in the ol’ Ercoupe does work quite well. And with the proper multi-viscosity (and expensive) AeroShell engine oil, we will be good-to-go any time the temperature gets into the 40s. The “Coupe does have a built in, electric, block heater, but if the days are cold enough to need that – I must remember that “I” do NOT have a built in electric heater.