The missing middle... $55-75k Mooneys... or do my own panel?

[rbridges]

11 minutes ago, Matt Ward said:

Being in the middle in any market is rarely advantageous, and that's no different with light airplanes.  I suspect if you take people's stated missions, "not in the flight levels", "some IFR but not hard IFR", "3 or 4 hour legs", "900+ pounds useful", "<10 gph", etc, you'd find a  C, E, F, J, etc would work just fine.  And you'd be able to stay down market without a problem.  But I don't think that's the real issue many folks face.  Rather, the more pragmatic $ differences come from "trim or hit an altitude hold button", "see all my CHTs at the same time or not", "fly an LPV", "play bluetooth audio to all seats or not", etc.  That's where the middle gets so messy.  Suddenly you have a $50K plane with a less-than-accretive $40K spend.

True. An older plane with a Garmin 300 and a basic AP and non-primary engine monitor hits most of the basics; and probably not too hard to find something equivalent. It's the finer details that change pricing and availability. 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, gsxrpilot said:

But the patience and persistence will certainly save you a lot of money... and the time is a wash. Either spend the time now looking for the right one or spend the time in the shop building the one you want... in both situations you are without wings for that period of time.

In one scenario you are making airplane payments, hangar rent, database update fees, etc. In the other, you are only searching for a plane.

[MikeOH]

12 hours ago, gsxrpilot said:

But the patience and persistence will certainly save you a lot of money... and the time is a wash. Either spend the time now looking for the right one or spend the time in the shop building the one you want... in both situations you are without wings for that period of time.

I must question that logic on two fronts:

1) Lack of any evidence that the time involved 'is a wash.'. You certainly CAN spend months looking, but if you have realistic expectations (you will NEVER find a plane EXACTLY like you envision in your dreams) and are truly committed to buying (not just kicking tires) there is no reason for the buying project to take the time a complete avionics upgrade requires.

2) If you spend the time in the shop you WILL be spending money WITHOUT the benefit of actually flying the plane.  IOW, the fixed costs are going to be with you from the day the sale closes.

[FloridaMan]

On 9/9/2020 at 11:18 AM, k5beason said:

 Who is offering 4.5% at 20 years?

We Florida Financial gave me 4.15% for 20 years on my Rocket. They'll go as low as 3.99% last I spoke with them. There's a dude named Alexander Martin who is awesome; they'll lend out of state. 

[the_elkhartian]

I was in this same boat in March-June of this year. I was trying to stay under $75k. It's very difficult to find a clean airplane. Finding one that has the right mix of avionics, engine time, damage history, and aesthetics is straight up unicorn hunting.

So, first lesson: The perfect airplane doesn't exist. You're going to compromise on something. (For me it was slightly higher engine time than I wanted, and no modern autopilot....I at least have an autopilot (Brittain with altitude hold, which a lot of people here would probably love to have) but it's a little archaic.

Second lesson: be ready to move fast. I got excited about a C model in my town that was posted here on MS. I had setup a time to see it within a couple of hours of being posted, and was going to see it the NEXT DAY....and before I even went to bed that night the owner messaged me and told me it was sold. 

Third lesson: you might just get lucky. My airplane was under contract the first time I inquired about it. Still I gave the guy my info and asked him to let me know if anything changed. Well, something changed...so he reached back out to me. I put a deposit on the airplane the next day, sight unseen.

Lastly, financing is pretty easy. I had it built up in my head that it was going to be easier to just pay cash, but I talked to a couple of banks anyway, and ultimately decided to use a little leverage. The difficulty can be described somewhere between "harder than a car loan" and "a lot easier than a home mortgage". I had a great experience with BANK out of Iowa. Met them a few years ago at OSH and just happened to keep a little swag microfiber cloth on my desk that had their info. Daniel Steiner was fantastic to work with and their rates were as good as I can find anywhere. www.bank.bank Highly recommend.