Recommendations

Roger that, that is the game plan for the moment. I am fortunate and fly out of KEEN near Mt Monadnock, plenty of room and other airports to toodle around and build time and experience. I managed to get in an hour and a half despite high winds and rain since the annual now. Transponder is back in but placarded for the moment till we can get it tested and certified. ADS-B is coming out and a new tail position light is enroute for the temp fix while it is sent back to uAvionix. And here I thought my 2004 Nissan XTerra was a money pit!

Saw the Trig TT22, did not know about the other piece of it. Would love one. The forever battle of "Original Looks vs Modern Safety Equipment" continues. That is quite a bit pricey, I may have to wait a couple years for a solution like that.My wife and my retirement funds have been hit hard by the economy and we've battened down the hatches on all expenses as much as we can for right now.

I don’t know where you live or fly, but if you can avoid the following airspace(s), you can defer it and fly day VFR til it comes back from repair.

Class A, B, and C airspace.
Above the ceiling and within the lateral boundaries of a Class B or Class C airspace area upward to 10,000 feet MSL.
Class E airspace within the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia at and above 10,000 feet MSL, excluding the airspace at and below 2,500 feet above the surface.
Class E airspace at and above 3,000 feet MSL over the Gulf of America from the coastline of the United States out to 12 nautical miles.
Within 30 nautical miles of those airports identified in 14 CFR part 91, Appendix D. Otherwise known as the Mode C veil.

I recently installed a Trig TT22 which is tiny and light weight, but the catch is that being Mode S it doesn't work with the tail beacon. You need to also purchase Trig's TN70A GPS Source to get ADS-B out, so the total cost ends up being north of $5k. Not cheap but it's a great unit.

Since it has an integrated altitude encoder, you get to ditch a few more ounces getting rid of that too.

Beware that Trig has a much cheaper GPS Source, the TN72, but that's only good for experimental and light sport. Since the Ercoupe is a certified aircraft, even when flown with light sport privileges, we gotta buy the expensive GPS (that does the same job anyway, sigh)

Roger that. It has an inop tail beacon right now that I need to send in for repair, I don't have the old tail light unfortunately. I found a 14v Grimes tail light on Aircraft Spruce and will look it up again.

As for the Transponder it currently has a Narco AT 150 TSO which weighs 2.3 lbs and takes up a chunk of panel. Hoping I can rebuild the panel to look as original as possible with smaller electronics. Am open for suggestions/help on that.