Socata TBs - future support etc

I re-did the RHS to make it more flyable from the RHS, and to give better redundancy. That was a really very satisfying improvement to the aircraft. I did all the design and panel hacking (have a turret mill at home).

The KA-33 blower is behind the centre stack, at the top so roughly behind the autopilot or intercom. There is a pile of hoses, about 15mm diameter, coming out of it, and I don’t fancy ever having to replace those. I have never done anything with it. Fortunately all the air hoses are like new at 12 years – except in one spot where a CAMO broke one of the 40mm ones (I will be splicing in a replacement section at the annual next week). The blower is activated by a thermistor switch which has been known to go faulty. I believe there is a test whereby you hold it with your fingers and the fan should come on.

My TB20 was indeed made for a US customer – N212GT originally (here) – but I didn’t know the fan was left out on any TBs. Never heard of that, and it would not be IAW the IMs for various avionics nowadays in the centre stack. Maybe it was left out in very old models, which were really bare. I used to know a bloke who ferried TBs from Tarbes in those days and he said some didn’t have an AI so they had to have really good VFR wx. I imagine their payload was about 50kg better too Also early TB9s or 10s had very little on the RHS and had a vertically truncated RHS panel; those look a little odd.

I looked at buying a TB10 back in 2002 (before my budget improved and I was able to go higher up) and found nothing but problematic examples. Since then I have seen a few (very few) GTs and they should be good. No matter how badly you abuse a GT maintenance-wise (and most I have seen have not had what I would call “maintenance”) the plane is just not old enough to have problems, IMHO.

If buying as a private owner, a 20 offers far more, for European flying.

We ran the below TB10, along side an Archer, as a club aircraft many, many years ago and it nearly brought our flying club to its knees financially. As treasurer I was very happy to see the back of it.

[pics deleted for some reason]

Hiya,

In the case of our TB10, it was the little snags that kept happening and the long down time that ensued while parts were sourced. Parts were also a lot more expensive than the Archer. I wish I had kept all my cost comparison vs hours flown reports etc. It made for interesting reading. Off the top of my head we had issues with the brakes, they caught fire when we took delivery of the machine, the flap switch broke off more times than I care to remember. I myself was victim of that one. Fuel cap issues. They required a key to open them. Door issues, lighting issues, lever issues and so forth. Perhaps we were the suckers that had bought a poorly maintained machine and paid the price? We eventually stopped people flying it (every 5 hours or so of flying resulted in a snag which resulted in long down time periods which no flying club can afford) took an overdraft to buy a C150 to sit alongside the Archer and that C150 paid for itself within 4 months and saved the day really. The TB10 was eventually sold on (a lot of politics involved and a very stressful time for me) and the rest is history.

As a flying machine, I enjoyed the TB10 although the head room was carp and I do remember in turbulence my Father (passenger) getting a bloody head from banging it against the roof. I also made 100% sure my performance calculations were correct when operating her with any sort of load out of the shorter strips. She was not inclined to want to leave terra firma in any hurry with a load. Other than that, she handled well and was more fun than the Archer.

I was trying to work out where you were operating it, Bloomer.

ZS-KWE gets around – Prague 2006 Germany 2003

According to this it is a very early TB10; 1981.

ZS is a South African reg and that is what the lower pic looks like. Maybe you were operating it out there, Bloomer? 5/10 for detective work if I got that right. I would not want to operate anything more sophisticated than a spanner in SA. My lady comes from there and most of it is the back of beyond. Has anybody read the astonishing accident report of that Thunder City crash of the Lightning? Not just the lack of maintenance but more importantly the attitudes (nonexistent attitudes) to risk.

It would take a lot of force to break off the current type flap switch. It is basically a toggle switch of this style but with the “flap”-shaped handle on it. Sure one can break the switch but it takes serious effort. Maybe the old switch was a flimsy type.

There has not been a problem with getting parts, for me or any other owner I know personally. As I mention in my writeup, there were “political problems” between Socata and some of their European dealers. Reading between the lines, and on the basis of what I heard from Air Touring before they went bust, I suspect some of them refused to pay Socata for parts because Socata refused to reimburse them for labour costs on warranty work. Then Socata stopped shipping parts to that dealer, but the dealer is hardly going to tell his customers that he can’t get the parts because of a billing dispute. He will prob99 lie and say they are not in stock, etc. Warranty labour is a common sticking point (with cars too) and the manufacturers normally lay down a schedule of how much they will pay for what job, and if the job takes twice as long then the dealer has to swallow it. Nowadays most European owners get parts from Troyes Aviation. They don’t keep stock and order back to back (like most dealers in any other business – I wonder why the manufacturers don’t just ship direct and keep the ~30%) but usually the stuff arrives within a week. Anyway most regular TB service parts are American bits and nobody would buy those from Socata. My Annual parts kit comes to a few hundred quid.

All that said, I would not buy a 1981 TB unless I wanted a “project aircraft”. But I would say the same for a Cessna or a Piper. 33 years is a very long time and one is totally at the mercy of what sort of spanner throwers has been working on it during that time. Without detail it’s hard to comment but I think that you bought a lemon – aviation is full of them.

10/10 for your detective work Peter. Looking at my log book, we kept her for 3 years and then axed her. A perfect aircraft for private ownership but not club environment. Re the flap switch, it was a little paddle on top of a slim metal pin thingy and it used to break at the base of the switch so you were stuffed. In my case it broke when I was raising the flaps after take-off, fortunately, so a flapless landing was a non event. Still, I did a fair few hours in her and enjoyed the flying part of it.

Looking at it from a slightly different angle as someone who puts 500 hours a year on a Cessna 150.The most important aspect is the overall operating costs.

150/2 and pa 28 are not particularly nice aircraft to fly but they are so wildly used because of their running costs. I can’t think of a time when I have had to wait longer that 48 hours for a spare part. What is it for a TB?

I also look at all these revamped 172/28 and think for 250 grand their costs (more or less) are the same to run as a 20 grand specimen. so from our and I suspect the majority of flying schools their is simply no business case to update.

What really needed is an airframe/engine combination that lowers running costs by say 20% then we might see some real new angle iron moving into flying schools. Which in time would supply airframes to private owners. Even better if the CAA red tape challenge could attract CTC/OAA to move their training back to the UK.

note: I am aware that in the states they run the 0360 in the 172 to 4000 hours (new top end at 2000) which we are not allowed to do in the UK.So there is some costs savings there.

Now the diesel 172 might just bring the required savings but It would be great if someone like socata re-entered the market. Not that I can see if happening mind but if they did what they need to do is reduce the running costs significantly.

I think there are separate issues here.

One is that somebody wants a “new” plane but doesn’t want to pay the silly money for a new 1950s design like a C172/PA28. In that case this might make sense. However I am suprised anybody has the capital – for either case. Most of the UK GA scene is devoid of capital, so even if somebody brought out a plane which costs £5/hr to run but costs 500k to buy, there would be few takers among the smaller operators. Does anybody in Europe buy new planes for PPL training?

I don’t believe running to 4k hrs makes a significant difference, because if you work out the engine fund for 2k hrs and work it out for 4k hrs, and subtract the two figures, the difference is about the cost of flying the downwind leg… this is why I don’t see why anybody wants to go past TBO. Well… most owners don’t have the money, and/or have not been building an engine fund, so they postpone the Big Decision until they sell. The reason is that the fuel cost totally dominates everything else. YET nearly all of the UK GA PPL training scene flies with the mysterious red lever all the way forward, burning some 30% extra fuel.

What they do in the USA, in the most cost effective outfits, is a combination of

• high utilisation (700-1000hrs/year in Arizona)
• maintenance done by own facility (so you are not funding a CAMO’s profit) and some ops do it during the night
• cheaper fuel than Europe
• no landing fees

For private use, I did incidentally once look at buying an old TB20, say £40k, and doing it up. But it doesn’t add up, because it would cost 100k to sort it out to a new spec, and £150k buys you a late model TB20GT (like mine for example). Also a TB20GT is much nicer than a done-up pre-GT; you get the higher roof and loads of little goodies. I don’t think “project aircraft” make sense unless you are after something that you can’t buy. For example I know a bloke who bought an old 421C (I guess, 100-150k) and spend another (guess) 150-200k on it. Completely rebuilt, repainted – except he left the engines alone. He ended up with a high mission profile plane, very good payload, everything as he wanted it (he even got PRNAV before the paper pushers woke up and made a huge meal of it) and for less money than a Seneca.

I just don’t think this makes sense for PPL training because most customers will go to the cheapest school in the area – in the UK, anyway. One could set up a school specially for successful professional people (the sort which Cirruses are marketed at) but I am not sure how this could be advertised.

[edit: typo]