Pilots

Stanley Jennings of Tucumcari, New Mexico, is an ex-fighter pilot with thousands of hours in high-performance airplanes. Yet he is unabashedly in love with Ercoupes — those unique, easy-to-fly birds designed without rudder pedals — and spends his days finding and restoring them.

To those who ridicule the stall- and spin-proof "drive-o-matic" design of Ercoupes, he points to the twin tail and says with gentle humor, "Reminds me of my P-38."

Jennings, now 71, flew B-25s and P-38s in World War II. When the shooting stopped, he went back to school, then settled in at a large Pontiac dealership in Albuquerque. To keep his hand in aviation, he joined the New Mexico Air National Guard.

When Jennings met his first Ercoupe in 1947, a love affair looked unlikely. "I was ferrying this Ercoupe from Tucumcari to Stockton, California, on a hot summer day," he recalls. "On that first takeoff, all my rudder instinct from flying 'real airplanes' came back and I just kept pushing on the rudder. Actually, I was hitting the brake when I should have left my feet on the floor!" He missed the airport fence by inches.

When the Korean conflict turned hot, Jennings' Air National Guard fighter squadron was activated. He was sent to a regular Air Force squadron which utilized F-86s. He then helped to set up all-weather operations in Alaska for F-94 pilots who were trained for zero-zero takeoffs and landings. "We were really good at instrument flying. You had to be good, because if you weren't, you were dead."

In 1952, the 28-year-old Jennings came home to Tucumcari. He ran successfully for county treasurer and later opened a furniture store. Wartime excitement faded, but not his love for aviation. Along the way, he sold enough furniture to buy a PT-22, trade that for a Cessna UC-78 Bamboo Bomber, enjoy a Stinson Voyager, form a partnership in a Piper PA-12, and buy a Mooney Mark 20A. In the late 1980s, he sold the furniture store and, with the help of his wife, discovered that retirement wasn't a suit he wore well. "Move out to the airport or find yourself another hobby," she told him somewhat tartly. "I don't want you around here all day."

That was when he once again found Ercoupes, and his affaire d'amour was under way.

The Ercoupe was designed in the 1930s to be stall- and spin-proof and groundloop-resistant. Revolutionary features included a nosewheel, automatically coordinated rudders (and no rudder pedals), and limited elevator travel. The Engineering Research Corporation (or Erco, thus the "Er" in Ercoupe) first manufactured it in 1939 with a 65-horsepower Continental, but only 113 rolled out the doors before World War II closed production lines in 1941.

When the war ended, Erco put the airplane back into production. More than 4,000 of the 415C models rolled out in 1946, second only to Piper Cub production for that year. But then the postwar bubble burst. Ownership of the type certificate bounced around, from Colorado-based Univair, to Forney, to Alon, and last, to Mooney, which in 1968 and 1969 built a few of a slightly modified version called the A-2A. Univair now has it and produces parts to keep the old birds flying.

Jennings' search for a retirement activity led him to Univair, where he saw big Ercoupe parts bins. "It was an obvious choice for a restoration specialty," said Jennings. "Lots of parts, and the cost of maintenance, annuals — all within a working man's budget." At the time, smooth-flying Ercoupes could be had for under $5,000; prices now range up to $16,000.

Not long after Jennings returned home, Albuquerque building contractor and private pilot Gary Whitlow landed at Tucumcari and started talking Ercoupe stuff. Jennings was impressed. "He knew every rivet, every bolt, every screw in those airplanes," he said. Whitlow and his wife, Eloise, moved to Tucumcari and joined Jennings in his labor of love.

Jennings and Whitlow turn out two or three beautifully restored Ercoupes a year, and they consider themselves purists. "We try to keep it basic," Jennings said. "Airspeed, altimeter, oil pressure and temperature gauges — just those instruments required by FAR Part 91."

"You can buy an Ercoupe and learn to fly for the least money of anything," avers Jennings. "We recommend that people buy the airplane, learn to fly in it, and then — if they like it — keep it, maybe add rudder pedals."

Although Ercoupes were designed for safety, accidents still occur. Jennings and Whitlow had a personal experience in the spring of 1990, when both were headed in formation to a fly-in at Sedona, Arizona. "Gary thinks he took his eyes off me for a second to pick up his E6-B," relates Jennings. "His propeller started nippin' on my canopy. Bits of canopy flew in my face and his gear hit my prop and killed the engine." In the meantime, Jennings' prop had sliced through the bottom of the other airplane, cutting the control cables and slicing Whitlow's foot. Both made emergency landings. To this day, Jennings swears the inherent slowness of Ercoupes had much to do with his survival.