I guess each one of us at EuroGA has his own way of living his flying adventures. Some of us picture ourselves landing on a small uncontrolled grass field, others as mountain flyers, others as long-distance travellers, others simply bimbling around home base or flying their helo to their favourite picnic destination or restaurant or flying to the occasional meetup not far from home, or any combination thereof or…
Occasionally it may seem a specific kind of flying is favoured herein. However, the variety of uncensored flavours seen in this forum tells otherwise, and is one of the widely appreciated values of the place. It would not be fun if you could not argue that your flying is better than the other guy’s, would it?
For over fifteen years, I have been a member of this community. I can’t thank enough the wealth of knowledge that valuable contributors have shared herein. I have also been contributing my stories in a parcelled manner, but never really told them in a continuum that could help others picture one possible path (mine) of going around a private aviation ownership “career”, with its givings and misgivings. I have once, or twice…OK, maybe thrice or four times, promised to do it over the years but never really came down to it.
@Peter has now promised me the privilege of a flight on N113AC if I share my story (he has not, but I am hoping he will get the hint), and armed with such (hoped-for) bribery in hand I cannot postpone it any more.
Since work-and-family life has a tendency to get in the way of any mid-term projects I will aim to tell it in comfortable bite-sized instalments.
So, where do we start…well, here I am with the love of my life (the human one, we’ll get to the other one later) and our three kids … with more luggage than I care to confess after visiting a friend near Augsburg, then spending a couple of nights in Muenchen and then a few days in the Austrian Alps…after an impressive climb through Tirolean valleys, flying placidly at FL200 above the weather ahead in our Cessna 210 while returning back home and enjoying spectacular views of the Alps. We are trueing in the mid 190’s KTAS, while our little daughter, uninterested in the views, is reading one of her books and her little brother, sitting next to her, bothers her with seemingly uninteresting games. Our teenage daughter is watching her movie in the copilot’s seat and I can barely contain my grin at the occasional 200KTS on the GS, but when I look back at the middle row of seats I am not sure if the view of my beautiful wife reading her favourite magazine with the occasional glimpse out of the window is more rejoicing.
Flying lean-of-peak, our six-banger is smoothly purring along happily burning 15.5 GPH. Having taken-off from the small airfield of Sankt Johann in Tirol, we only had to fly IMC through a couple of cloud layers in the descent for an easy landing back home after 3.5 hours. The 660NM trip has used 63 USG of the precious 100LL fuel. Oh, and did I tell you cabin altitude has always been comfortably below FL100?What other airplane can do that for you? You don’t need to answer just yet, but please instead read on with me into some of the roads GA has laid out for me and can maybe lay out for you…but no, yours will be so much better: they will be yours after all! I just hope you can enjoy mine too.
Nice picture @Antonio, it sounds like you have created the right ecology for looking after your mission capable airplane. Have only flown the 210 Turbo (a late 70’s model and this was around 40 years ago) a stable IFR going places airplane.
Beautifully written!
Yes, as you will see, mission changes as life progresses but our 210 has been fitting all our missions wonderfully for almost a decade.
Thanks. Ten years ago, I have written up the experience with the SR22 in its first ten years for Pilot&Flugzeug. Reminds me that I need to start working on the follow-up („The second decade“). Will be much shorter than the first article though, as there is so much less to say about the second decade. In a nutshell: much higher maintenance costs of course (yet still a very reliable aircraft), but no more airframe depreciation. Result: „cheaper“ flying.
That article about the first ten years was one of my better ones, if I may say.
We are trueing in the mid 190’s KTAS, while our little daughter, uninterested in the views, is reading one of her books and her little brother, sitting next to her, bothers her with seemingly uninteresting games. Our teenage daughter is watching her movie in the copilot’s seat and I can barely contain my grin at the occasional 200KTS on the GS, but when I look back at the middle row of seats I am not sure if the view of my beautiful wife reading her favourite magazine with the occasional glimpse out of the window is more rejoicing.
I have to say that this is a great achievement, as well as being a substantial responsibility. To achieve utility in a complex older plane and not failing in that endeavor, instead of simply paying for something new makes it better and more interesting to me.
I would never do such a thing because of the risk of failure and financial loss, and I’d have little to no interest in a new plane either. But it’s great read of others taking the technical risk in buying and operating something older and super complex, and (especially) succeeding in doing so.
boscomantico wrote:
the experience with the SR22 in its first ten years
Can you share that perhaps in the SR22 thread? Will surely make interesting reading! Your experience must have been more @Peter -like (ie buying a new SEP and flying it for decades) than mine (buying an already depreciated airplane, pay higher maintenance costs)
Or perhaps the story is already linked somewhere in the forums?
Yes, keep them coming 😀
Due to popular demand…
Ticket to the Moon
I am laying on my back under an airplane’s oily belly. Upheld rag-holding arms rubbing the crud off. Mask-less, glove-less, I am little over 10 years old.
Born a few days before humankind’s first Moon landing, I have been involved with aviation since I was a kid cleaning the underbelly of the local aeroclub’s Skyhawk in exchange for flying time back in the good old 1980’s, when, like in the old song by the ELO, things were so uncomplicated… Any disgustiness brought about by the task totally overcome by the elation at being next to airplanes, thinking of my next flight and dreaming of one day owning the fastest airplane, probably a turbo-Mooney: twins, turboprops and jets were not in my sights. Being a young man of Catholic faith, my dreams comingled with my prayers, and life went on and…
Too long after that, with a family in sight, an aeronautical engineering job and different priorities, my desires were more for a family transport that could also be used for bimbling around. It had to be efficient enough not to eat up the family travelling budget, but fast enough to make going places practical. Not to get too carried away…at the time my financial priorities had been dominated by acquiring a living place in Mallorca and once my freshly obtained PPL was put to use there was not much budget left for airplane acquisitions. Not completely deterred, airplane ownership was still in my prayers, but realism set in with only aeroclub flying in the visible horizon.
I was thoroughly enjoying that view, progressively expanding my flying boundaries with longer and longer trips, shared with friends to up the enjoyment and lower the cost, getting lost once or twice while dead-reckoning over mainland Spain and participating in local aerial nav rallies that I had a tendency to win when, one day, unprovoked, one of my PPL-mates at the aeroclub started asking questions about airplane ownership. That got me started having third thoughts…By now my target airplane was a Cessna 177RG or perhaps an 182RG…the latter looked more capable but less efficient for similar speeds. My friend seemed to be onboard too. A PA28R and an SR20 were briefly considered but the smaller/less flexible cabin, slightly lower efficiency and/or having to deal with composites in what was then a mostly metal local GA world quickly ruled them out. And yes, I favour high-wings, the previous sentence was just excuses…
Budget simply ruled out Bonanzas, 210’s, TB20’s and the likes.
And that is how he and I ended up reading a lot, joining Cardinal Flyers Online, doing a couple of pre-buy’s in Europe and two more in the USA. Three or four months later, a five-figure AMU amount exchanged, some avionics and interior work done, further debt acquired, and I was one of the two partners in a gorgeous Cessna Cardinal RG flying around the central USA with my soon-to-be wife. My (non-wife-to-be-) partner earned the privilege of the transatlantic flight via the Northern route while I prepared the welcome committee back home, customs included. That is how a couple of further months later, Julietta, as we had decided to name our 1976 EC-reg C177RG, landed in what was to be her Mediterranean island homebase for the next eight years. It had been quite an adventure I never got to orderly report on, although you will find glimpses here and there in the EuroGA forum.
It was an immaculate bird, low-time, completely corrosion free, with a freshly OH’d engine in its second run and 600+lbs payload after uploading 60USG fuel. GAMIjectors and JPI EDM800 enabled LOP ops and, as a result , 140KTAS on 9GPH allowed 700+NM IFR trips. Handling was sweet and smooth in pitch and roll: it was more of a nimble Bonanza than a classic Skyhawk.
Julietta was lovingly looked after as part of the family, hangared and carefully maintained under the then-new EASA rules. It flew business colleagues, family, friends, myself and renters all around Europe and North Africa, from SL (yes, lower than I will confess to) to FL170, Melilla at 35N to King’s Bay at 80N, VFR and IFR, Atlantic and Med to Arctic seas, GA airfields, altiports, gravel and grass fields to international mega-airports, 2 mos-olds to elderly grandpas on business, family and sports trips.
Julietta at Bagneres de Luchon
Over Aletschlesser, just South of Mönch
Mont Blanc
Longyearbyen
Spitzbergen
King’s Bay
So, after 7 years and 800hrs, the family situation changed when a third kid was on the way. Although a fifth seat had been offered on FG 177’s it had never been available for the RG’s and I briefly considered engaging on a one-off STC for installing a child seat in the baggage compartment.
However, even the little girls started saying we needed another airplane with five “little chairs”…so what, how, and how much was it to be?
