AndyFromCB

How is $530 a month 72 cents an hour? That's 6359 a year? Divided by 180 hours (if you fly that much first year), it's $35 an hour, not 72 cents. And more like 63 an hour if you fly as much as most people who can afford to make this payment do (100 a year or so). Just for shits and giggles take a look at this invoice if you need an eye opener. This was not any sort of a giant annual, just lots of little things here and there (and was proceeded by about $15K worth of work just a few months before). Most airplanes don't get this kind of open checkbook maintenance, especially ones for sale so the deferred maintenance will catch up with you, the new owner. http://www.riskmt.com/n767rd/other/Annual2012.pdf You're not building any equity, it's a depreciating asset. And you're maintaining a 500K aircraft with new parts priced correspondingly.

No, but I'm making payments on one.

I also see you mentioned building equity in an airplane. Now you're just being silly.

5 year old TBM 850 ($2.5 purchase price) will run you about $200K a year before putting fuel into it. Add another $200 per hour for fuel. This does not includes sales tax, but it does include interest, insurance, hangar and maintenance. Personally, I'd rather fly the baby king air with Blackhawks. No matter what anyone says, maintenance is identical between two birds (lots of used KA90 parts around, not so with Socata and you can price shop gear overhauls, etc), the big block turbine costs about twice as much as two small turbines for reserves, rest of the systems are pretty much identical, you get a potty and can buy one for million and half less, so interest payments at least half as much. And if you lose one, you can hang at FL190 at gross while TBM becomes a space shuttle. TBM with an engine out is not a PC12 or Meridian. It's a very, very unforgiving bird. Other than sheer speed/range, it makes no sense whatsoever. And with TBM you cannot get away renting a smaller hangar because the rudder is so damn tall, so you might as well fill it up with a KA90 ;-) My old company sold it and got a KA350 and actually saved money. Me, I'm back to being semi retired for a while (quit/sold out/got fired, depending on whom you ask), so I'm back in the piston world with a Turbo 206. After putting VGs on it, I love it.

60 to 100 dollars an hour? Not to burst your bubble, but triple it... At 150 an hour, at worst you're in for $27,000. One oil change can cost you twice as much when you find out the engine just ate a camshaft, but let's say you get lucky and you have no major catastrophic failures. Let's look at some numbers and consider you're living in CA, not exactly a low cost state, assuming you buy a decent airplane and you run into the usual expenses of maintaining an older, gear swinging aircraft. First of all, if you spend $100,000 on the aircraft, well, let's say the economy takes a shit. You can be out of $50K pretty damn quickly. Or mooney closes its doors one last final time (not unlikely, considering how they are not selling any airplanes, because nobody in their right mind will spend $800K when Cirrus/Piper Mirage exists) You'll be spending $7.5K on sales tax in PRCA, so there is $40 an hour alone (calculated on 180 hours total usage). You borrow $80K, put $20K down, you'll be paying $4.5K in interest alone, so there $25 an hour You will pay around $1.5K in insurance your first year, there is $8 an hour Add another $1K for various navigation databases, XM weather, etc, there is $5 an hour Add 4 oil changes (you said you won't have a hangar, hard to do on a ramp, probably not allowed), $1K, there is $5 an hour Add basic annual nothing major breaking down $2K, there is $10 an hour Add another $2K for when things break down (and they will, this number is the lowest you can expect to spend), look up how much a battery costs and see how long they last baking in the sun, there is $10 an hour. You're over $100 an hour before you even put fuel in there, assuming nothing breaks down. Now look up some parts prices for vacuum pumps, gyros, avionics break downs, etc. Look up for a fuel pump costs. By the time all is said and done, without any major failure, if you fly 180 hours in a year, you will be most likely looking at $200 an hour for a $100K aircraft. Move on up in the food chain and start thinking $300 an hour for any of the turboed birds. No trying to scare you, but you need to be realistic. I find with fuel around $6 a gallon, triple for a single, 4 times for a twin gives you a good number without major failure.

Here is the deal, if you think renting is a money pit, you're not ready to buy an airplane. As simple as that. Be ready to spend 2 times as much owning as renting, maybe 3 to 4 times your first year. Renting is always cheaper, good rule of live by, if it flies, floats and fornicates, rent it, it's cheaper in the long run. You only buy for convenience. I have to disagree with Anthony, there is no such thing as right airplane, unless you buy one from me when I get bored with it (well, and few other members on this board), and then still the 2x rule will still apply. The rest of pilot/owners are CSOBs and you will end up with a money pit. Or you can buy a brand spanking new Turbo 206, with warranty, and still end up writing close to $30K worth of checks your first year fixing various issues because Cessna apparently hires spider monkeys to assemble aircraft but the best attorneys money can buy to write the warranty contract.

I do not understand how Avemco stays in business? They have never been competitive for me, usually by at a factor of at least 1.5X vs next lowest quote. And they don't even pay broker commission. WTF?

Anthony, What the hell is it with getting old? Where the hell did 2016 go? What did I accomplish? I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.

Or your alternate static is on, it's a little pull handle on the panel. The fuse is in the battery compartment, on the pilot side. There will be lights fuses, clock fuse and a few others. Do you have the electrical diagram for your airplane? Does your mechanic? Worth looking into getting one.

http://www.controller.com/listings/aircraft/for-sale/1439559/1988-mooney-m20l-pfm I like this one, two GMX-200s. I think I'll make on offer, $65K, basically what I can get out of it by breaking it down and selling the parts and pieces on eBay. The seller is currently dreaming. Of course it can be ;-) Get your $500 paper annuals (you know, the ones that fit on an address label) and fly it until it falls apart. Plenty of older IAs out there willing to do this. Just don't ever take it to a certified repair station.

And how will that keep the revolving door of military industrial complex going? You cannot support all that high rank going to work for the defense contractors after they put in their 20 years to rake in their millions with A10 orders. F35 is much better for that. Winning wars is not the primary mission of the Pentagon. Hasn't been since about 1947.

Joe, Losing access to my corporate turbine ride (got fed up and quit), and while the 206 is a great family plane, I need something faster and FIKI for meetings, so I'm back to looking at Mooney after looking at TN G36s (the climb rate is anemic at 4000lb, in a very, very scary way). The Turbo 206 is a climber even at 3800b, but with a 39ft wingspan, that's not surprising. So now I'm thinking Acclaim. Two questions: -is the 310hp upgrade still available? Who holds the STC now? Did they ever resolve the RPM redline issue on G1000? -is the TKS fluid included in the W&B on your bird? The low useful load scares me on a few birds I semi looked at, but it would be a different story if 60lb was already included.

This is my favorite aviation quote ever. Thank you for a laugh.

I think your biggest problem with any sort of hydrophobic coating, or WD40 is runback. If the water does not freeze upon hitting the leading edge, it will freeze the moment it hits an unprotected area farther back on the wing causing even greater flow disruptions than if it formed on leading edge. So I'd be very, very careful putting anything on leading edges to prevent ice formation. TKS is different as it mixes with water and depresses the freezing point of the entire solution. Snow never sticks to wings in flight as far as I have been able to tell, never had icing issues in snowstorms.

What was the consensus? Abort? Why not if at V1? What's a chance of that happening on a modern jet? Less than zero? I can think of a few spots in lower 48 where continuing take off without navigation would result in guaranteed death unless you were in a old Learjet with 10000fpm climb rate.

Never say never, long, long time ago, far, far away, I got about 50mph past Vne on a Cherokee 140 after brain fart during a botched roll. That's about 230mph? Oh, to be young and smart again...

To keep from exceeding 250knots on climb out would be my only guess ;-)

Bob Hoover has passed away...

That idea is quite simple and like I said, already exists. Look at winds aloft, take best glide speed, see if any fields exist within glide distances - fudge factor, proceed to field and land. With WASS GPS, there really isn't much involved in creating an auto land system, especially an emegency auto land system that does not require the aircraft to fly again, only for the passengers to walk away. All the code required for that is more or less inside your typical G1000 system (Indicated airspeed hold, VNAV, Boeing banana, winds aloft and metar from XM, terrain and underspeed protection). The system does not even need to flare, or at least not much, simply slightly reduce the rate of decent starting at 20AGL and you have a system that will plant an aircraft on a runway, under 400fpm vertical impact in a crab if needed. Bet you a few folks at Garmin have written it already as a side project on a weekend or two. Actually I know they have, I have seen their G5000 auto throttle operate on a Cessna X and its smoother than anything I've ever seen a pilot be able to do, so there is a lot of predictive computation going on there). Now as to landing in a field, from a 1000ft, that's a pipe dream for a long time to come. For that you will need LIDAR and 3D FLIR, a super computer on board for image processing and many times it will still not be able to come up with a calculate survivable "solution". As a pilot of a single (even an SR22 with BRS), you simply must accept that there might come a time where your death is pretty much certain. Tiny, tiny chance, but it's there. Now, if Cirrus could integrate a solid boost rocket with enough power to accelerate the aircraft at Vx to BRS minimum deployment altitude from rotation speed and 0 AGL, you would more or less kill a need for a twin or a turbine.

It will make a considerably less interesting of a procedure at 17mph than at 80mph. Most ideas are not put into practice because they are terrible ideas in practice. Good ideas always succeed otherwise there were not good. As much as I love Volvos (had a C30, S60 waiting for the V90 Wagon to arrive stateside), I don't see that happening. I don't care how well you design a vehicle, there is not a damn thing you can do prevent me from doing 130mph in my C30 up north on I29 and slamming into a cow and unless the glass is 3 inches thick, that cow will go thru my windshield. There is also nothing you can do to prevent a flying car from landing on top of your windshield like an accident I witnessed this summer on I80. A car crossed a median at 80mph (wide median with a dip) over falling asleep and overcorrecting, became airborne, slammed into a top of a petrol tanker and landed on top of an Infinity killing the driver. Somehow I don't think Volvo is taking "projectiles" into account. So unless they plan on making their cars look like a tank, weight as much and achieve .25mpg, people will still die in Volvos.

Guaranteed survivable deadstick landing is something I would like to see ;-) How exactly do you propose this works? Greasing the landing it not an issue, you can code that in a few weeks (it has already been coded many times over). What you can't code for is 4inch steel pipe with 4ft of concrete foundation in the middle of a corn field holding sensors, or the fact that many areas of USA of A simply have no survivable options below let's say 35,000ft west of Denver short of flying very convoluted routing. Neither can you account for cows (being they are mobile), cars, farm equipment, etc.

Yes, but even the radio doesn't solve much. Around here everybody has a very different idea of what north, east, west and south means and 2 miles south-east can mean between 1 to 5 miles on probably 110 different possible headings. Radio solves very little until in or close to pattern. With active traffic showing you exact direction and altitude and actively looking for traffic, I don't see them about 10% of the time and if it wasn't for active traffic I highly doubt I'd see half the traffic at all.

Oh yeah, everybody these days seem to have a PhD. I know a lot more PhDs than pilots in real life by a good 10 to 1 ratio. About 600,000 pilots total, about 2,800,000 PhDs.

Hard to do for a Turbo Mooney below about 12,000ft ;-) Big sky theory at work. Had the same thing happen to me 3 times in my life. Actually had a smoldering cigarette butt fly right past me tossed out of the little side window of a Piper Seneca. Really nobody to blame, see and avoid is mostly a joke invented for peace of mind more than having any value in providing actual separation. Sticking to sofa, netflix and drinking is the only sure way of avoiding a midair.

Not an issue with a hot wing, not an issue with most small jets due to engine position anyway, look at the M2. That ice would have to move 2 feet up in 10 foot length from the leading edge in order to enter the engine.