Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes I need an attitude adjustment.

Gee! It looks like Gary has mostly said it all for me! Though I am curious why you are doing title searches of each aircraft before you decision to buy? If you finance through AOPA, that is simply part of the process at the time of the sale.

You may want to revise the way you ASK your questions. Just reading off a list like you have created definitely stamps you a "Newbie." In which many sellers are reluctant to deal with. Some will not even sell to a newbie. So, my advice? Engage in conversation with the seller first. Chit chat with the owner. Start out by telling the seller why you are looking for an airplane. This helps relieve the buyer of the notion that you are just another tire kicker. Thus, the seller will usually open up to tell his story. Sound like you know what you are doing. Sprinkle your questions as they become relevent in the chat. Your questions will be answered during the course of the conversation.

Oh! And when you find that airplane and it is half way, or all the way, across the country? C'mon here and have one of us go and take a looksie for you. We would be more then happy to do that!!

Ah! And one final addition. Unless you absolutey require a snazzy paint job. Or super duper avionics. You need to pay no more then $20,000 for a decent 150 with a mid time engine. And I wouldn't even consider a 152. (Mostly because of their 24V electrical system.)

Best of luck Cory!

Corey,

You need to find a fellow club member with experience in the buying and flying area to be a mentor. I think you have unfortunately just experienced a bad string, but sometimes that is due to not targeting properly.

Get someone near you to help you look and eliminate birds, or like you are doing, word of mouth through the club will be one fo the best opportunities.

Hang in there....it will work out if it is meant to be.

Hi Corey! I wish I could offer you some advice on buying but I am a renter and as with all renters I hope to be an owner some day. I learn more and more every time I log into this club. The resources here are great. There are some good past posts on buying. One in particular was about 7 pages long. It started just about the way yours did and went on and on about different planes and different opinions. But the end result had a happy ending and the fellow purchased a plane that was in his cash market and I believe he is still very happy with it.

As far as a CFI, Pro's and Cons on both! I guess you will get many opinions. Mine for all it is worth is, a smaller airport and a fellow who enjoys to instruct. Because your not paying for all that taxi time that you will get at a larger airport, and when you go to a corp. school most CFI's meters start running the moment you say good morning to the moment you say good bye. The CFI I had to get me current again was a guy who had his own 150 and instructed for the joy of instructing. I only paid for the Hobbs. Rare? probably, but they are out there. Good luck on your shopping! Hope to see you at Clinton next year showing off your plane!---TIM

As for the PPL, are you an EAA member? If there is a local chapter, join it. I spent a year (1998) helping to form a flying club, and the flying club was all from the Lincoln EAA chapter. We pooled money for a plane, our club-member lawyer handled the incorporation, we leased the plane to ourselves, and charged ourselves high monthly dues and LOW hourly wet rates (idea being we'd go broke if the plane wasn't in the air). The Ts were crossed and the i's were all dotted in December 1998, and my first lesson was Dec. 31. The time spent organizing saved me large amounts of cash.

When the club "graduated" to a Cherokee 180, I finally ended up with the club Cessna 150. And by then, of course, I knew the plane pretty well...

Logbooks? After 40 years, "complete" logbooks are not complete. I, for instance, wonder why my 1967 G has 1971 wingtips. The logbooks don't tell me, yet they go all the way back to the day it was first flown.

Corey,

A couple of quick notes. You can always get the serial number for any C150-152 from the club serial number database in the club hangar. Our database is even better than the FAA's because we took the time to make sure the serial numbers are complete. It's common for the FAA to accept whatever serial number is submitted to them so for example they have an airplane with the serial number 0877. The actual serial number is F15000877, which is unique because its an imported Reims airplane, but you would have a hard time figuring that out without the full serial number. Another common issue is a dash in the serial number, (no US built airplanes have dashes in the serial number.)

Lastly, be sure you really need a hangar before jumping on that bandwagon. I have found over the years that the cost of my hangar is the largest cost of flying. In fact, my hangar cost me more each year than all the costs of both of my airplanes combined, I mean everything, including annuals, insurance and fuel. And here's the kicker: Starting the 1st of next month, my hangar ground lease is tripling! I've owned the hangar for 3 years now (an mistaken attempt to save money) and now I am a hostage, forced to pay whatever the ground lease is, my only option to get out of it is to sell the hangar.

Hangars are a great thing to have, but as a new airplane owner, you need to make sure you don't spend yourself out of aviation, just to have a hangar.

If going without a hangar is not an option where you fly, then try your best to share space in someone else's hangar.

Corey:

On the instructor issue, find a retired airline pilot who instructs because he loves to fly. You might have to look around for awhile, but I bet there are some on your home field.

The catch is providing the airplane. If you are buying your own airplane it is not a problem. If not, then the instructor will need to be associated with an FBO with rentals available.

Reg

Another thought came to me in the last few minutes. Corey, because you aren't yet a pilot, your questions may lack some of the "slang" or known terminology that pilots accept as the norm, or your questions may seem naive to some. Unfortunately, this may identify you to some sellers as a "wannabe", and they may not consider you a serious buyer. I personally have experienced this a few times when shopping for a plane, even though I was experienced. The prevailing attitude seems to “If you know airplanes, you know enough about this one to decide whether to buy this one or not, cash talks, BS walks."

Sadly, many pilots tend to be more egotistically than non pilots, and also less tolerant of non pilots. It's an unfortunate phenomena that you can help rectify by not being that way yourself once you become a pilot.

Don't know it that helps exactly, but it might give you some insight as to why you are being treated as Annoying. On behalf of the less tolerant sellers out there, I’m sorry you’ve gotten so much attitude, and I hope you will stick with your quest.

Corey, keep in mind that what might seem like an attitude on the part of the seller might just be that he is being cautious. I've been trying to sell my plane and recently had a potential buyer who seemed to be trying to take advantage of my willingness to work with him. He may just have been very cautious, I don't know. Then the pre-buy turned out to be a headache. I'll be supervising the next inspection. And don't forget, planes are like family members and the owners look at them through rose-colored glasses.

I do get repeated calls from people who ask questions, but never come out to look and don't sound like they're ready to buy a plane. I'm polite and patient with them, but I can see how it would get annoying after a while. You might start the dialog with something like "No bull, I am going to buy an airplane. The question is which one."

Corey

I went though AOPA insurance and was able to get 29K in haul insurance on a 1967 150G. All you need to do is point out why it's justified.

(low time engine / air frame, new paint, ect) it also helps to have an appraisal. AOPA has a good estimator on there web site www.aopa.org [aopa.org]

Bottom line you can get more then 20K.


You may consider a plane that needs a cosmetic overhaul ( new paint and interer) but other wise mechanicaly in good shape with little corrotion with the insturments you want (VFR / IFR). that way it will not matter if it needs to sit on the ramp for a while until you can get a hanger, then you can put the money into it to make it look nice.

Corey

One more note:

Don't forget to just do a web search (www.Google.com [google.com])on the registration number.
sometimes you will get information that doesn't show up in the offical records ( Log books, title, accident reports )

FYI some of the NTSB records were distroyed in a fire in the mid-70's so some times information from other records may be the only way to find damage history if the repairs were not entered into the logs. ( the good buddy A/P)