Not (Only) Your Father’s Ercoupe (But Also Your Grandfather’s)

The event was the Carolinas-Virginia Antique Airplane Foundation spring fly-in at Woodward Field in Camden, South Carolina, this past April. Claude Burkhead’s 1946 Ercoupe stood out on the ramp because, in part, “Burke,” as he likes to be called, was one of only a dozen or so pilots who did not allow a rainy weekend to dampen his enthusiasm for this event. It would have been easy to overlook this diminutive tricycle-gear, shiny, bare-metal two-seater, parked amongst a Howard DGA and a trio of colorful Waco cabin biplanes, but then I got to talking with Burke and realized that this 80-year-old aircraft has an unusual history, having been owned by the same family for three generations.

The Ercoupe itself is an interesting story, which begins with Fred Ernest Weick (1899 to 1993), who was an airmail pilot, research engineer, and aircraft designer. While working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), he won the 1929 Collier Trophy for his design of the NACA cowling for radial air-cooled engines. He helped design the first wind tunnel devoted to full-scale propeller research and authored a book on propeller design that became a classic. He went on to design several successful aircraft, including the Piper Pawnee and Cherokee.

In 1936, Weick left NACA to take a position as chief designer for an upstart aircraft manufacturer, the Engineering and Research Corporation (ERCO). His goal was to design a reasonably priced aircraft that would incorporate a number of design innovations focused on simplicity and safety. The aircraft was named “Ercoupe,” after the ERCO manufacturer, and its first model was the ERCO 310, which made its first flight in October 1937. A novel feature of the Ercoupe was that it lacked rudder pedals. It was flown using only the control wheel. The rudders and aileron system were linked together, along with a steerable nosewheel. The control wheel controlled the pitch and the steering of the aircraft, both on the ground and in the air, simplifying control and coordinated turning and eliminating the need for rudder pedals. This was the first use and patent of a steerable tricycle gear. A completely new category of pilot license was created by the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) for Ercoupe pilots who had never used a rudder pedal. In addition, the Ercoupe was the first aircraft certified by the CAA as “characteristically incapable of spinning.” A single prototype was built.

In 1940, the first Ercoupe 415 rolled off the production line at College Park Airport, Maryland (KCGS). 112 aircraft were delivered before WW-II intervened. These early models were powered by a 65-hp (48 kW) Continental A65-8 engine. Following the war, ERCO went on to build 4408 Ercoupe 415-Cs, which were powered by a 75-hp (56 kW) Continental C75-12 engine. It is reported that the aircraft was aggressively marketed through unconventional outlets such as the men’s department of the Macy’s department store chain.

Unfortunately for ERCO, the anticipated post-war general aviation boom failed to materialize, and ownership of the Ercoupe design bounced around for the next 24 years. In 1946, Aeronca obtained a license to produce the Ercoupe 415 as the Aeronca 12AC and built two prototypes. This project never progressed beyond those two airframes. In 1947, ERCO sold its remaining Ercoupe inventory to Sanders Aviation, which continued to produce the aircraft in the same ERCO-owned factory. A total of 213 aircraft were sold over three years. In 1950, Univair Aircraft Corporation of Aurora, Colorado, purchased the Ercoupe design to provide spare parts and customer support to the existing aircraft. In April 1955, Univair sold the Ercoupe type certificate to the Forney Aircraft Company of Fort Collins, Colorado, which later became the Fornaire Aircraft Company. Production began in 1958 and ended in 1959 after 138 aircraft were built, by then using a 90-hp (67 kW) Continental C90-12F. By then, the aircraft was marketed as an “Aircoupe.” Between August 1960 and March 1964, the rights to the Aircoupe aircraft were held by the AirCoupe division of Air Products Company of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Twenty-five airframes were produced before the type certificate was sold to Alon Inc., on March 16, 1964.

Alon was formed by a pair of former Beechcraft executives, John Allen and Lee Higdon, who purchased all assets, jigs, tools, and engineering of the program in 1964. They had previously negotiated with Forney Aircraft to purchase production of the Aircoupe so that Beechcraft could use the design as an introductory trainer. However, Beechcraft decided to focus on producing the Musketeer. Alon made a few significant changes to the original concept. Alon Aircoupes featured sliding canopies and limited-movement rudder pedals. Nosewheel steering was no longer interlinked with the control yoke and was changed to the more common practice of being interlinked with the rudder pedals. The older two-axis control system was offered as an option. Alon produced 245 A-2s from 1964 to 1967. Finally, on Oct. 9, 1967, Alon was purchased by and became a division of the Mooney Airplane Company of Kerrville, Texas. Mooney redesigned the Aircoupe with a single-tail version with the signature Mooney forward-swept rudder and built 59 M10 Cadets. Today, the type certificate is owned by Univair Aircraft Corporation of Aurora, Colorado. The company has not produced any new aircraft but continues to produce replacement parts and provide technical assistance to Ercoupe owners.

On May 17, 1946, Ercoupe 415-C serial number 1575 rolled off ERCO’s assembly line. Registered NC94352, it was delivered to its first owner three weeks later. However, shortly after it was delivered, the Ercoupe was involved in a mishap. After a relatively minor repair, 1575 was bought by Claude Burkhead Sr. of Candor, North Carolina, in December 1946. That was nearly 80 years ago. Today, N94352 is owned by Claude Burkhead III, “Burke,” living in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area.

Burke reminisces, “Granddad was exposed to aviation early in life, but he did not learn to fly until he was in his mid-50s. However, once he did, he was all in. Soon after he bought the aircraft, he and Dad began making improvements to it. One of the first things they did was to install better radios, which included adding the distinctive ADF loop antenna. That antenna remains on the aircraft today and is one of its distinctive features. They replaced the original fuel tanks with aluminum ones that helped reduce weight. They also replaced the wood fixed-pitch propeller with a variable-pitch F-200 Aeromatic prop. This was later replaced with a McCauley Met-L-Prop. Later, they also aluminized the fabric wings. They kept the aircraft at Jack Reynolds’ airstrip in Candor. In September 1963, the title was transferred from Claude Sr. to Claude Jr.”

Claude Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps, learning to fly at the same airport with the same instructor as Claude Sr. did. He did a brief stint flying crop dusters but decided that this line of work was a little bit too dangerous. He did some flying for Jack Reynolds, who owned a large crop-dusting business. Later, he flew around the country collecting BT-13s for Reynolds, who would then strip them of their engines and wheels to use for his fleet of Stearman crop dusters. In fact, it was Claude Jr. who picked up the Ercoupe from Salisbury, North Carolina, and flew it to its new home at Candor.

Burke recalls, “Dad used the Ercoupe the same way most families would pile into the station wagon. The fact is, I was flying in this Ercoupe before I was born! That’s what my Mom used to say, anyway. I can’t say I remember those flights, but I do have fond memories from as far back as 7 years old of piling into the Ercoupe with Dad and my siblings (we were all small, so a couple of us could cram into that little airplane!). One weekend, we would fly to Elizabeth City to watch the hydroplane races, then the next weekend, we might go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In fact, back in the day, we could land on the beach. Of course, it was this airplane that kindled my passion for flying from a very early age. In some ways, I feel like I grew up in that airplane!”

He continues, “From an early age, I was very much immersed in aviation. Dad was teaching me about flying even before I was big enough to see out the canopy. I learned rudimentary navigation through compass heading and airspeed. By the time I was 12 years old, I was pulling the Ercoupe out of the hangar, preflighting it, taking off, navigating, and landing by myself, but all under Dad’s watchful eye. If that was not enough aviation, my folks also volunteered at Sun ‘n Fun for some two dozen years. That gave me an opportunity to enjoy the event more as a participant than as a spectator. Interestingly, I had so many opportunities to fly with other pilots that I did not get my own private pilot’s license (PPL) until I was 27 years old. I was flying all the time with Dad. He was a CFII, so sometimes I’d sit in the back of some really nice hardware and just enjoy that, and he got me rides with friends, so I could fly just about anytime I wanted to. I was also going to school, earning my degree in nuclear engineering, but once I landed my first job, I finally got around to earning my certificate.”

Burke’s first job lasted about one year. He explains, “I got out of it because that was when that little incident at Three Mile Island occurred, and suddenly, nuclear engineering was not a popular career. I really would have liked to have gone into design, but it wasn’t a good time, so I went around the country delivering race cars and interviewing for various jobs. I finally ended up finding a company in the Research Triangle of North Carolina that did engineering consulting and also owned a Cessna 206 that they would let me fly, so that is why I joined them. I got my high-performance checkout as well as my IFR rating and flew that 206 all around the Southeast.”

The bulk of Burke’s career was spent in forensic consulting, investigating things that failed, such as investigating motor vehicle crashes. He explains, “Failure analysis would be a more accurate job description. I specialized in truck and motorcycle accidents all over the country. We had a metallurgist and a bunch of computer power, and we pioneered using the computer to do accident reconstruction. It was interesting work, and I went back and got a mechanical engineering degree while I was working. My nuclear engineering background gave me a huge amount of mechanical engineering to work with.”

In February 1998, N94352 was transferred from Claude Burkhead Jr. to Claude Burkhead III, and he has been fastidious in maintaining this unique family heirloom. In January 2003, the FAA issued airworthiness directive (AD) 2002-26-02 to address Wing Center Section and Spar Corrosion. This critical AD required repetitive inspections of the wing center section and main spar to detect and mitigate internal corrosion, a known issue in older Ercoupe airframes. This is commonly referred to as the “Swiss Cheese AD,” since it called for the installation of 32 inspection panels under the wings. However, Burke points out, “You could not see the top of the I-beam spar, because in our case it was covered by metal. We ended up taking the metal off, so we could see the spar caps, one of the primary places for corrosion, and we did not find any. In fact, we could still read ‘Alcoa’ on the inside of the aluminum.”

While the Ercoupe was down to comply with this AD, Burke decided to address several other items. For starters, the wings were Alumiprepped and Alodined, then painted with epoxy self-etching primer. That process pretty much eliminates any future corrosion, so those wings are good for a hundred years. He continues, “We did a little bit of rewiring, replacing some of the cloth-wrapped insulation with MilSpec-grade wiring, while replacing some fuses with circuit breakers. We also decided to switch out the C-75 engine with a 100-hp Continental O-200. That was Dad’s decision since it was getting hard to find the crankshafts for the 75. So, we found a used O-200 with Millennium cylinders and put that on in 2003. And then three years ago, we overhauled that engine, and when we did, we got new Millennium cylinders, and we upgraded all of the wiring. While we were at it, we replaced every remaining fuse with circuit breakers, and we added some circuit breakers for safety. I also replaced the generator with an alternator and replaced those big wires with heavy-duty cables between the alternator and the battery. We also added a master relay.”

Finally, Burke and friends added an Insight G2 Graphic Engine Monitor (GEM). Burke says that the G2 keeps up with everything from fuel flow to individual cylinder head temperatures (CHTs) and exhaust gas temperatures (EGTs), and records them. With this, he can download the information and graph out everything to see how the engine is doing. Along with the G2, the 80-year-old Ercoupe was fitted with an Electroair Electronic Ignition System (EIS), which replaces one of the traditional, less efficient aircraft magnetos with a fully electronic, microprocessor-controlled spark system. It automatically optimizes spark timing based on altitude and engine load to boost horsepower, improve high-altitude performance, and increase fuel economy. He claims that this EIS provides a huge increase in efficiency. He adds, “I can routinely climb to 10,000 or even 12,500 on trips to AirVenture, or Florida, or just down to the Outer Banks, North Carolina, and I can get up to those altitudes in 20 to 22 minutes. I can then cruise while burning 3.6 gallons an hour instead of 5 or 6, and fly for 3 to 3 1/2 hours and still have an hour of reserve fuel. There was no way I could even come close to any of these figures before.”

Burke’s Ercoupe may look like an octogenarian on the outside, but it is more like a teenager underneath its skin. He credits the airplane’s longevity to a couple of factors. First of all, the Ercoupe has been in the family for practically its entire lifetime, which gives him complete knowledge and total confidence in its maintenance history, leading right into the second factor.

Burke gives full credit to Vernon Gregory of Precision Services Inc., of Swansea, South Carolina, as one of the greatest sources of new and old parts for Ercoupe/Aircoupes in the world. In 2017, he bought the massive inventory of Skyport. The Precision website notes that it has over 70 Ercoupe airframes on hand. Burke says, “Vern can get you just about every part, from a complete used wing to motor mounts. It is fairly unique in the vintage airplane world having such a repository of aircraft components and such a knowledgeable source. My Ercoupe would not be what it is if it were not for Vern and his bottomless pit of airplane parts.”

Of course, finding parts is only part of the battle. Having people who know what parts are necessary and what to do with those parts is another issue. To that point, Burke says, “We’ve been blessed with a succession of outstanding mechanics, all authorized inspectors (IAs) and airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanics. Jack Reynolds was the original mechanic in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1950s, Ed Mackenzie assumed many of the maintenance duties. Elmer Rogers took care of the Ercoupe from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. Elmer was then followed by his son, Scotti Rogers, who maintained it for some 30 years until his passing in 2020. Paul Cotrufo did excellent work over several years. Then, beginning around 2003, Tom Malachuk and Jeff Young guided the Ercoupe through the major AD, rewiring, reskinning, and engine change. Tom has since retired, but Jeff still routinely works on our bird, along with Dale Butler. These guys are our heroes. Through their expertise and professionalism, there’s no reason not to expect to see this Ercoupe flying for another 80 years.”

Burke also praises his wife as an important part of his Ercoupe’s legacy. He says, “I’m blessed that my wife, Debby, is the most patient and supportive wife that an airplane owner could ever hope for. She’s a big part of the reason that this plane continues to fly.”