Yes, or so I was told. You can imagine how that may have gone initially, given good friends.
I definitely won’t be renting it out and have no intentions to fly unlimited stuff. I’m having too much fun as it is now already👍.
I used to fly out of KGAI and on an airport nearby, several EA300s were based. Never saw them fly though. Bill Finegan with his Pitts was based on another airport nearby and I flew with him on occasion. For a 70+ pilot, he surely doesn’t hold back!
My canopy job was very complicated and a lot of adjustments had to be made. Luckily the insurance had experience with this kind of thing and picked up the tab without complaining. The wing and tail sections were completely dismantled for transport to Extra so we also got a good look at the insides of the plane. It gave us a chance to check for hidden issues but aside from some worn out screws, all was well. That said, I now have a case of canopy paranoia and have a sticker in the plane that reads ‘lock the f***ing canopy’. After all, the cost was well north of $20k.
“Canopy paranoia” is surely a good thing and in addition if the canopy does come loose on takeoff, it’s a good idea to keep flying the plane while aborting, and not to run into anything.
Silvaire wrote:
A few years ago, friends bought an Extra from an insurance company, totaled and sold for a fraction of its prior value due to a ground accident that broke the canopy and damaged the wing
Isn’t this insurance fraud? I take it the insurance company had written it off and have given the previous owner a good deal of money ? Peculiar behavior by Extra though. By the way, certain crows are excellent food 
No, buying and repairing insurance totaled aircraft and reselling them is not fraud (!) In this case it’s a casual, enjoyable side business based on having higher level skills and better contacts than the insurance company could obtain to repair a plane themselves, paying nothing for labor and making a profit when the aircraft is sold.
My friends who did the work on the Extra I mentioned have other aircraft related design and manufacturing businesses, but are highly skilled in hands-on work and use the money made by this side activity to finance their next toy. They’ve been doing this for years so some of the toys can now be pretty nice planes – they currently have a highly upgraded and modified Lancair IV and a TB30 as well as their own previous homebuilt projects that haven’t ever been sold. One advantage of having your business at the airport with experienced staff is that you can have an ‘R&D’ hangar and spend about half your time there. It seems to me they must spend about 75 hrs a week at the airport in total, six days a week, but it’s where they like to be. Buyers like the idea of buying anything they’ve touched – nothing succeeds like success.
BTW, the Extra got an engine overhaul too before being sold, as purchased it did not have the Lycoming crankshaft AD done and during the down time fighting Extra and FAA the clock ran out. I believe they bought a new crankshaft very inexpensively, somebody had one that had never been installed, and then did the engine assembly work themselves with machine work done by ‘secret’ (airboat) engine people working under supervision. The whole engine overhaul cost circa $15K IIRC. One of guys picked up an A&P many years ago so can sign off both the machine work and assembly work. The partner who does the engines does not have an A&P but has assembled more Reno racing engines than he could count.
FAA vs EASA regulations… FAA is so much more practical compared to EASA.
It also doesn’t hurt if you have the skill developed since you designed and built your first original design homebuilt (a 200 mph composite plane) in your early 20s, after first competing a Varieze project in your teens. That is the situation for one of these guys, and the other is equally impressive. I’m an engineer working in a not unrelated field and continue to learn a great deal from association with both of them.
Silvaire wrote:
No, buying and repairing insurance totaled aircraft and reselling them is not fraud
I was thinking more about the insurance company. They obviously sold the “totaled” aircraft with a price tag way too low. No wonder insurance fees are high.
They sold it for what is by definition the market price
That the buyer just happened to be somebody with great expertise and the ability to work without accounting for his time, is a separate issue.
Yep, insurance companies sell planes at auction to the highest bidder. Bidders are usually pretty smart but not necessarily very skilled in composites repair or negotiations with FAA. I imagine the competing bids for this aircraft were based on the value of parting it out. As always being more skilled, harder working and more resourceful than the next guy makes money, in the end, in this case after a year of hassles.
