Ralph Bear with me for a second. With the things I got when I bought my Coupe, I got a brand new cheap Chinese tach. Now that my Ercoupe tach has gone bad, my A&P IA (quite correctly) won't sign the Chinese tach as a replacement, so I had to buy a new, certificated one. My first tought was to sell the Chinese tach on E Bay, but instead, I saved it as the very first part for my Sonex (the poor man's RV?) Just a simbolic baby step... Like you, I feel so limited by the whole TSO / certificated / 337 / field approval process... Unlike you, I would try hard to keep the Coupe, even if I ever get to build the Sonex. Best Regards Eliacim
Now thatI inherited ----- Original Message ----- From: Ralph Finch To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 9:38 AM Subject: [ercoupe-flyin] RE: Type Club I can only contribute opinions to this discussion, not constructive suggestions, but here they are anyway. I was a member of EOC when I first bought my Alon in 2001, but quit renewing a year or two ago. When it switched to an online newsletter I quit noticing it and got the information I needed from these email lists. Basically if I'm going to pay money for something there has to be a value returned! I'm a member of AOPA, for instance, for one reason: their lobbying and advocacy in Washington. I don't read their magazine much these days. I certainly agree that we Coupers could be more effective in dealing with the FAA. How that is to be achieved I leave to wiser heads than mine. I look at the Coupes as I do aging parents: with great affection and the wistful knowledge they are static or declining as the world moves on. Whereas RVs and their kind are like children: chaotic, energetic, and the future. Therefore next month--January--I'm going to start building an RV-9A, and in a couple of years when it's time to put on an engine I'll sell my Alon to purchase the engine. Not because I don't like the Coupe, but because I'm ready for something almost twice as fast that I can put things on, like an autopilot or solid state gyros, that are both better and cheaper than the TSO's/certificated stuff. Ralph Finch
