RobertL18C wrote:
This is a significant proportion of the acquisition cost
If I wouldn’t have called for IFR, fast, Turbo, payload and probably up to 6 seats, to reach destinations with a family, I would’ve ended up also with something a lot more cheaper than what I have. But just alone these avionics come quite costly. And you have to have quite some knowledge (or gambling skills) to buy cheap.
So yes, to close the circle, no one has to be afraid on the way to owning an aircraft, but some knowledge helps.
RobertL18C wrote:
OK let’s share positive experience. First aircraft was an MEP with run out engines
Nice positive experiences! Thanks for sharing.
RobertL18C wrote:
Let’s however not be polyanna-ish, owning and maintaining certified aircraft has become more complicated
It’s ok to warn people. But in the end, I feel that if you scare everyone out of ownership, things become even more harder for the few who do go down that route.
For your own good, you want people to be warned. You want people to not suffer horror stories that will then scare even more people. At the same time, don’t scare everyone way :-)
It would be a sad day when GA enthusiasts at EASA no longer see a need to support owner pilots, because there aren’t any anymore ;-)
(I exaggerate, of course)
To give another positive spirit, for example in Germany owning an aircraft has become much less complicated and cheaper than as it has been 10 years ago. SERA helped a lot.
Jujupilote wrote:
Thanks Snoopy. It would be great for us to read a thread about how you manage your first plane. Just updated when something happens of course :)
Will do, got lots of notes already to produce something worthwhile ;)
Whiskey_Bravo wrote:
As of last week the group is at full strength of seven. We’ve been through the first annual with no major disasters and in September the aircraft will get a a major avionics overhaul, GI275’s, Garmin Navigator, ADSB, Engine Monitor etc.
Awesome, congratulations. Do keep us updated on the upgrade.
boscomantico wrote:
The thing is: Snoopy has been heavily involved in GA forums forums for several years before finally buying his first (very basic) plane.I still have a lot to learn, hence now owning instead of only reading. I do enjoy learning about the subject and finding out how things “really” are, mostly because I was told so many myths over time. „Very basic“ due to cost concerns primarily because my career dissolved overnight last year and I need to carefully budget currently. An Arrow would be nice, but injection, retractable gear and variable pitch prop can (in unlucky cases) really drive the costs up. My geographic location doesn’t require a lot of speed to reach worthwhile destinations in an acceptable time, so that helps a bit.
In that timefrmae, he also participated in seminars on airplane onwership and EASA maintenance, etc. In other words: he has a huge headstart in terms of knowledge over most other prospective aircraft owners.
I did one seminar on Part-ML and one on Part-ML AMP, both very recently. If someone finds the topic personally interesting, the seminars are great. If someone isn’t fond of spending the time, there are easier ways, such as finding a SEP experienced CAMO and use them for tracking only without controlled environment.
So, do we say that this level of “preparation” and study is really necessary in order to buy an aircraft and not end up in tears? I think that is not a satisfactory situation, and will not help in increasing the number of (long term) and happy aircraft owners. EASA rules and their application in practice are just very complicated and tricky.
I don’t think it’s necessary. Part ML is still pretty new, and it takes time for it to trickle down. More important is reaching out (eg on here) and building contacts. Others might be quicker to pull the trigger on a plane and learn quicker that way too. There are some really knowledgeable people on here that know more about a specific model than any mechanic. And they probably read way less than me.
Btw, Snoopy hasn’t yet had any experience running the aircraft. Here merely bought it. Now the fun starts. As said, he is a rare, very well prepared example though. And it will be interesting to get a look back say 5 years from now.
I’m sure there will be some unexpected things. There’s always something. I try to go step by step, keep the financial risk manageable and get the best solution available to me right now. I’ve got some visions, perhaps the universe will arrange them ;)
@UdoR
Good post. I agree just buying whatever is on planecheck can be a trap. But thanks to the internet, DD can be done. That’s what we have EuroGA for.
It’s always a unique case and depends a lot on the category and price of a plane.
A fixed gear, fixed prop, O-320 spamcan is one thing, a turbo Comanche another ;)
Snoopy wrote:
An Arrow would be nice, but injection, retractable gear and variable pitch prop can (in unlucky cases) really drive the costs up
I’ve been wondering about that. Incidently I almost bought an Arrow once but backed off when I saw the maintenance bills. It appears that Arrows have a lot of costly items which are re-occurring or prone to trouble? I honestly don’t know why, but it is not the only time I’ve heard that Arrows are expensive to maintain. Hydraulic landing gear and the prop do carry additional cost but why injection?
On the other hand, I fly a plane with a variable prop and retracable (manual) gear and so far I can not say that either has caused any noticable cost increase over an Archer or Warrior in terms of maintenance, from what numbers I get tell me. I’ve done one prop overhaul at 1500 Euros since I own the plane, plus one governor overhaul which was a couple of hundred francs, but nothing really extreme. So system complexity and parts costs appear to be a huge factor in this. Beech has a bit of a reputation for this.
Certainly what helps is to have bog standard components wherever possible. O320 and O360 engines fulfill that to the max as they are extremely common and easy to maintain, also comparatively economical to overhaul. Whether the IO360 is noticably more expensive I don’t know, but it also is a very common engine. Personally, I’d prefer an injected engine alone for the fact that it can be balanced (GAMI) and there is no danger of carb ice. But possibly this comes at a price.
What does drive cost up are turbos, complex systems and part shortages.
So quite probably it is quite true that fixed gear and prop are the ideal economy planes. When going further, then system complexity is a major concern, yet there are noticable differences for similar kinds of planes.
Part ML is still pretty new, and it takes time for it to trickle down
Not really; the industry simply hates these concessions. See here – this main one has been around for 7 years, and still almost nobody knows about it, and when most maintenance companies / avionics installers have it brought to their attention by you, you are walking on eggshells.
I am of course 100% in favour of people buying their own planes. It is the very best thing you can do to enjoy flying. They just need to do the standard due diligence. The required steps could be written on the back of a fag packet. Yet, most big problems are directly traceable to people not having done it.
So why don’t people do it? I think EuroGA has a lot of value there, even if most industry people get cheesed off and boycott it.
A lot of people simply skip the prebuy or don’t do it properly, due to the cost, hassle, having travelled a long way (that’s always a tricky one; usually it results in a purchase regardless of condition), the plane matching the nail varnish colour, the mechanic being incompetent (one awful case mentioned here recently), etc.
Very much agree with Snoopy. I find some of the stuff you read very often puts people off from GA, be it from any form of flying let alone ownership, as people love to pontificate for hours on minor points. After all, that’s what forums (forae?) are for!
Another happy aircraft owner here, 20+ years, on two aircraft which I have flown combined over 2000hrs under the EASA system and over the years maintained in four different countries. The key is to be involved in the maintenance and paperwork, and built a relationship of understanding and trust with your mechanic. You can’t treat it like a car where you drop it off and expect to collect the car a couple days later, and change car repair places every other year. You have to approach it like a classic car. After all, most of the airframes are nearly half a century old.
Yet I believe (or at least I have convinced myself( I have managed to keep costs down to acceptable levels, comparing it very favourably vs renting. Anyway, who cares, it is a passion and it doesn’t all come to down to accounting. From memory, there have been only a handful of flights (three?) I could not do for mechanical reasons of the past decade, my plane is used flown at least every other weekend from Easter to October, as I am very lucky to have a family use for it, flying to visit family and our holiday house.
My mechanic has been looking after my Mooney for over a dozen years now, but also used other mechanics or avionics shops for ad hoc work when it wasn’t practical to fly back there. I certainly find the overwhelming majority of shops I have dealt with across Europe equally passionate about working on old aeroplanes and willing to help out. They are certainly not in it for the money or taking advantage of owners. As I think I have written before, there are maybe just a couple places out of a dozen I would not particularly choose, not because they were awful, they certainly were adequate, but the others were better.
Proactive maintenance is key, we plan ahead when thinking about changing parts etc, giving plenty of time to source the part. I am often the one tracking those parts down, and checking on paperwork, possible alternative STCs etc, as the mechanic prefers to actually work on the aeroplane. Quick call to Lasar in California and the part is in western France in just over 48hrs. Simple tasks like changing the oil, change a spark plug if needed, etc I do myself, and I have two left hands. I am not particularly mechanically talented, on the contrary.
Take the time to actually help out and learn, and you quickly realise it can take an enormous amount of unexpected time to undo that old bolt, trace the dodgy wire in the rats nest behind the avionics etc, so you get a bit more understanding when timescales or estimates are not always met. I have found it a great learning experience.
