Story of Ercoupe plane at Wakulla Airport

Members of the Experimental Aircraft Association with a Ercoupe airplane they built in a hangar at Wakulla Airport.

By YOUNES ERRAHALI EAA Chapter 445

I am a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, EAA. We meet every month at Tallahassee Airport to learn more about aviation. Many of us know how to fly an aircraft or want to learn how.
Our members like to take on projects for recreation but also for education. An average amateur-built aircraft will take between 1,000 and 3,000 hours to complete. The cost to build a plane can range from less than $10,000 to more than $100,000 depending on the desired characteristics. By comparison, a new factory-built Cessna 172 costs more than $250,000!
I was invited by our president, Mr. Percy, to come down to one of the hangars at 2J0 (Wakulla Airport) to learn about and help build an Ercoupe aircraft. The small turf grass runway was always in view out front of our open hangar door as we worked in the balmy shade to organize parts and figure out where to go from just an empty airplane frame.
At a large airport, it would be unlikely, both economically and strategically, for a small group of hobbyists like us to find a home base to house our aircraft from bare frame to finished airworthy aircraft. At the Wakulla Airport, with pooled resources, our EAA members were able to have a place to come, without busy jet traffic, and often a nice Gulf breeze, to work on our little plane.
Mr. Randy, Mr. Percy, Mrs. Lynette, Mr. Jim, Mr. Richard and other EAA members at the Wakulla County Airport have spent the past 3 years checking electric circuits and the fuel line, installing the engine, and checking the altimeter, speedometer and fuel indicator.
Over the past three years, we’ve had many visitors at the hanger. Friends from Wakulla and curious visitors from all over the U.S. have stopped by off U.S. 98 and asked about our aircraft project.
I had always seen the airplane on the Tarpine neighborhood sign, but I never imagined how beloved the airstrip was by residents here who volunteer their time to help maintain the airport. We’ve befriended many Tarpine residents who have let us borrow a tool we didn’t have or have shared a bit of their own aviation knowledge to help us build the Ercoupe. The Ercoupe took its first flight here at the airport just the other day!
I also came to learn that the Wakulla County Airport is the only airport in the entire county! It has a unique grass runway and is a great environment for learning to fly. It is a quiet airport with very little traffic and so it is a less stressful learning environment with no extra turbulence created by jets that is typical of larger airports.
This airport is a unique and unimposing jewel here in Wakulla County, like so many of the other beloved gems found here that can be found nowhere else on Earth. Shh! But we know Wakulla isn’t a perfectly kept secret and that is why people from all over have ended up wandering up to the hanger for a chat. I’ve heard stories of emergency landings having occurred here, possibly saving lives; pilots are trained to point the aircraft in the direction of the closest airport or suitable landing area, paved or not, during an in-flight emergency, and this airport is the only one in the whole of Wakulla County’s coastline.
The airport has great untapped potential while still envisioning it remaining a small, low traffic airport with just a turf runway. There could be aviation training for student pilots, imagine local high school students being able to learn to fly here. There could be more aviation tourism. There could be a hangar for use by emergency responders. The potential goes on and on, and I hope the airport will be here, on and on, for the benefit of the people of Wakulla and the whole country, now and for generations to come.
As an EAA member, I imagine the possibilities that experimental aircraft could bring to us in the next 100 years.And I think back, how the first engine-powered plane flight was taken by the Wright brothers in 1903, just 120 years ago.
Nowadays, we fly hundreds of people at a time across whole oceans with little concern for the fact that a plane carrying just one human or two was “experimental” just over a century ago.