Next Adventure

I'm now working on buying a plane. It's a bit more complicated -- and taxing -- than I'd expected.

The first one I looked at seemed almost perfect: right model and year, no significant damage history, good price, low time, and hangared within an hour's drive. I went out to see it, and it seemed well-kept. He had a couple of sports cars stored in the hangar with the plane, and he obviously took good care of his machines. The owner just didn't get to fly much anymore and wanted to sell. (I'm going to avoid specifically identifying the plane or owner here.)

He let me look over the books, and everything seemed to be in order. The I&A logs looked right, the engine tests looked great, and the known sorts of problems for that plane were all absent.

After reading detailed postings on a few other sites (particularly www.aopa.org and www.cardinalflyers.com), I decided that it'd be worthwhile to invest in an appraisal before going further. I contacted the NAAA, and was given a pointer to Ken Dantzig. He was able to make some time to go out and pore over the log books and the plane for several hours. (Appraiser's aren't mechanics and don't open things up; they spend most of the time with the records and the observable details.)

I was expecting this to be a slightly expensive formality. It wasn't. He found several issues that I just wouldn't have noticed on my own because I wasn't looking in the right places. After a few days of anxiously waiting, I got the written report. It surprised me -- the value was much below what either the seller or I expected, and the details backed this up. In particular, the engine and prop had essentially no value left. It would probably continue to fly for another ten years like this ... but who knows? The risk of either an expensive overhaul or just plain failure was too high for me.

The seller wasn't happy to hear this. He obviously disagreed with the appraiser and, as long as it keeps passing annual inspection with good compression, I can sympathize with his view. And he's right that I'm not going to find another comparable aircraft out there. But I'm going to keep on trying.

I learned a lot in the process, and I think I'll be in a better position to view offers more critically in the future. If nothing else, when you see "XXX SMOH," you should ask, "so what year was that last major overhaul?" If it's 5-10 years, not bad. If it's more like 30, that might be a problem.

To anyone else who might be in the position of buying (or even selling) an aircraft: appraisals count. It looks expensive at first, particularly when you realize that if everything's fine, you're still going to have to get the plane to a mechanic and pay him for a day's labor in pre-purchase inspection. But I'm certain that he's saved me from a very likely (and very expensive) overhaul in the near future. If nothing else, it's an extra set of eyes on the problem, and as an engineer, I know the value of that.