toto

It's been a little while since I used one of these courses, so I don't want to recommend a particular publisher. But I'll just note that there can be a big difference between knowledge courses and test prep courses. If you take a good online knowledge course, you may actually get a lower score on the written but have a better understanding of the material than if you take a pure test prep course. Since it sounds like you're primarily interested in knowledge, go with one of the long-form video publishers.

Yep. The only time I've seen this was after an annual, with finger-tight screws that weren't followed up with a screwdriver.

Right, but capping liability to 18 years for certain claims could have a major impact on the manufacturer’s total exposure.

Back when US single-engine piston production ground to a halt in 1986 or so, manufacturers were saying that ~50% of their cost was liability insurance. That’s my vague recollection, anyway. After the GA Revitalization Act (1996ish) and later, it may well be that labor costs represent a much higher portion of the purchase price.

We saw something very interesting over the past ten years with the Icon A5. It was a clean-sheet design, built for a brand-new niche. A flying jetski -- with bare minimum avionics, limited fuel supply, room for two. Their marketing made it into all sorts of "lifestyle" publications, and I honestly think they could have sold the hell out of them if it weren't for a very messy certification road and some very high-profile crashes. There is absolutely nothing you can do with a $350k Icon A5 that you can't do with a $20k-something SeaReay that you buy used from Barnstormers, but no one has ever heard of a SeaRey, and the Icon was on the front cover of everything. (Granted, they were originally going to be $150k before demand dropped to zero and lost all economies of scale.) Anyway, I think the Icon proves the proposition that you can still create a new niche in aviation, and it doesn't necessarily require an engineering breakthrough. Just a clever marketing team and some patient investors.

Ah, that's an interesting approach that I didn't even know was a thing. We have now exceeded my knowledge of aircraft insurance

One thing to watch out for.. some carriers require that all individuals with an ownership interest in the aircraft be named on the policy.

My understanding is that they decided against commissioning new aircraft for the presidential transport. They bought two used airframes that had never seen commerical service (so they were mothballed but nearly new - I think they were destined for a Russian airline that ran into financial trouble).

This is an interesting perspective. My limited experience with pre-buy inspections is more "look for the deal-killers." It never occurred to me to ask about cosmetic stuff, but I can see how that might be a useful list to have in your back pocket.

Eek. That's a lot. I have two policies with Global, and they've dropped the Savvy benefit that I thought was probably worth its $99 retail price. So I kinda hoped for a small premium drop this year. Did your hours fall off significantly from last year?

TBH, I've never gotten a personalized letter. I have only ever seen generic postcards, and I always have the impression that they're from wholesalers.

Not directly answering your question, but many on this board recommend contacting Jimmy Garrison at All American Aircraft for this sort of thing. https://www.allamericanaircraft.com/ I'm not sure about everyone else, but I immediately trash solicitations that come in the mail from people wanting to buy aircraft.

I'll add to this: If the plane is hangared, prebuy the hangar as well. It's amazing how closely the state of someone's hangar correlates with the state of their airplane.

Yep, +100 on this. Even if the best shop in the world has been doing the maintenance, you'll want an independent opinion on the prebuy. The most well-intentioned among us will overlook our own flaws

Couple thoughts.. 1. An annual and a prebuy are different things, but you can potentially combine them and save a little money: Have your selected shop do the prebuy but leave inspection panels open, interior out, etc. Go over the prebuy report with them and discuss findings. If you decide that this airplane is right for you, then you can complete the sale before authorizing the shop to proceed with the annual (at this point, it's your plane). If the prebuy doesn't go well, you just have the shop button the plane back up and return it to the seller. 2. A Mooney might be a lot of airplane for a primary trainer. There are arguments on both sides of this, and lots of previous threads on MS with good discussion. ... As a side note, since you're an experienced mechanic you're probably far better than most of us at determining shop quality and competence. It may be less of a dice roll for you than it feels for me when dealing with new-to-me people and new-to-me airplanes.

Glad to know I'm not the only one with a bunch of giant leather Jepp binders in a closet that I can't bring myself to throw away. The process for keeping the Jepp charts up to date was incredibly painful, but they had a far superior product to the government charts. When you eliminate the printing and paper quality differences (the IFR enroute charts were also so much easier to fold and reference in the cockpit), I haven't found the Jepp charts worth the money. But they're still better.

This is in no way relevant to the question the OP asked, but ... The GTN series navigators have a convenient visual approach option that paints a GPS-derived glideslope over an extended centerline. Requires no published approaches (although I suspect there are some airports where it doesn't work - haven't seen one yet). I find it particularly helpful when VFR in a busy unfamiliar airport environment - you get a fake localizer+glideslope indication that definitely helps confirm the sight picture.

You might ask about hangars here on MS - always possible that a local MS member has an empty hangar for a day.

So you supplied the avionics, and the shop was hired to install them? I've never had any experience with an avionics shop that didn't involve a written estimate up front, but I know that install times can be very unpredictable - many shops use markup on the hardware to absorb labor overruns when they happen. So they may be less inclined to offer a hard up-front quote on a labor-only install.

Yeah the FS510 is an honest to goodness $20 device that is sold for $1500, I suppose because everyone would have concerns about whether a generic wifi sd card would get flagged on a ramp check. Anyway, you're paying the $1500 for the data (which may well be nothing more than a text file with a serial number in it), and to create a disk image for sharing with pilot friends would certainly be sketchy from an IP perspective. But still.

I do the $299 nav subscription and the $49 SafeTaxi one-time in the same order. So my nav is always current for IFR and SafeTaxi is not more than a year old.

Is there any reason to think that rates will go down from here instead of up? I have a policy that renews in late August.. do the tea leaves say that I should submit paperwork now, or wait a month?

Yeah, I'm not really sure. It's a differentiator, but maybe one that isn't super valuable. Garmin says: "For aircraft flying in visual conditions, pilots can optionally connect the aera 760 to select autopilots to fly lateral GPS and single point vertical navigation (VNAV) guidance. For example, pilots flying in visual conditions can fly a VNAV profile from their current altitude to pattern altitude using the aera 760 fully coupled to the autopilot." https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/aera-760-7-inch-format-portable-aviation-gps/ I guess the idea is that you can have a G5 and a GFC500 but with a panel-mount navigator that has very limited capability. So you drive your autopilot with the Aera 760, which gives proper nav/vnav guidance for a fraction of the price of a GTN. I could certainly see that as part of a phased panel upgrade.

https://support.garmin.com/ms-MY/?faq=VFLTVe7r9X7NFh5lttExZA (That's the Garmin support page, but I have no first-hand knowledge.)

My understanding is that it has a built-in AHRS, which can be used for attitude and SV with no external connectivity.