Coordinated directional control was accomplished solely with differential aileron movement, thus eliminating the need for coordinated movable rudder controls. The intent was that the experienced automobile driver would be able to step into the airplane and solo it with only an hour or so of flight instruction. While this was unrealistic, many people were able to solo the airplane with less than four hours of dual flight time.
There was actually a competition for an everyman's safety plane in the 1930s. The Stearman-Hammond was one of the entries. There were about eight entries, and IIRC none won the prize!
The reason the Weick and the makers of the S-H eliminated separate aileron and rudder control inputs was because it was understood that cross-control stalls frequently led to nonsurvivable low altitude spin entries. Wolfgang Langeweische (sp?) wrote that "they spin in, and in fifty years, someone will write that they spin in." (a paraphrase but a close one; and wasn't he tragically correct).
The safest a/c in the thirties was probably the Pitcairn autogiro. It was probably safer by design than most modern gyroplanes.
There were some hairy airplanes indeed in this period, because for every degreed engineer like Fred Weick (who worked at NACA Langley in this period) there were a lot of amateurs of highly variable skills and spotty knowledge.
Kinda like today ;)
One ship called the Crouch-Bolas used two engines blowing their prop blast over the wings to get incredible STOL performance. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, if either engine failed, you were already below VMC (this is a bad thing; you'd roll into the dead engine inexorably and hit the ground in an unsurvivable manner). Prof. Otto Koppen of MIT campaigned tirelessly against this kind of design (he would later be involved in the Helio project, a much safer low-speed plane).
Modern tiltrotors would be similarly unsafe with one engine out, but materials science has advanced enough that a crossover shaft runs both prop/rotors off either engine and a freewheeling clutch disconnects the dead engine.
Ercoupes are as much fun as they look like. You can open the windows (in the later ones, the canopies) and go into "roadster mode". There is a guy at my field who thinks he's a hot rock. He shuts down at the intersection of 16-34 and Taxiway A and then coasts down the ramp, weaving in and out of the parked a/c, to spin with a flourish and stop exactly in his tiedown spot.
In a crosswind, landing a 'coupe without rudder pedals is a lot like landing a big four-engined jet. You crab it in wings level and let the gear take the sideload. The landing gear on the 'coupe is that robust. ISTR that the original 415C, 415D etc. did not have any max crosswind component. (for the non-pilots, in a normal crosswind landing it is vitally important for the airplane to be moving parallel to the centerline of the runway, as close to the centerline as possible, and with its own axis also parallel to the runway centerline (and therefore the direction of motion). Pilots usually do this by putting the upwind wing down a little and using the rudder to keep aligned with the centreline.
You can't do that on some 4-engined jets cause you'd drag the outboard engine, and the paperwork is unbelievable.
As far as this punk joyrider is concerned -- there is one of these every few years. In 2003 (IIRC) there was a kid who got drunk and tried to steal a Bonanza. After taxiing it around he decided he better not mess with it, and stole a 172 instead. The cops found it wrapped up in a field with an open 30-pack of Bud inside, and a blood trail.
When they came for the guy -- already a multi time loser -- he greeted the cop and stuck his toothbrush in his shirt pocket... he knew he wasn't gonna be waking up at home. Amazing he lived though.
Back in the 1990s, somebody stole a 150 in (IIRC) the Seattle area, and ultimately tried to fly under a bridge (not a maneuver to be attempted spontaneously, but risk management wasn't this cat's thing, I guess).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
