Considering M20C

[Pinecone]

Another consideration is insurance cost.

Getting your IR before buying the plane will save you money on the first year insurance.

The other side is, do you IR in YOUR airplane and I will be very comfortable in it in IMC.

[Skates97]

I bought my D (essentially a C) with I think about 60 hours total time. Flew it for almost five years all over the SW and once coast to coast without an instrument rating. Our regular trips areSoCal to AZ, CO, or UT.

Just flew CA to OSH and back VFR the whole way. I did finally get my IFR rating. Having the IFR ticket has been helpful with the marine layer here on the coast the past couple of years as I didn't have to adjust arrival and departure times but the only trips I canceled completely before the rating are ones I couldn't have made with it because of either convection or icing. 

If you aren't too heavy you can still get a C off the ground in high DA. We have a house right by KPSO and have departed there more than once when the DA was over 10k. 

[The Other Red Baron]

On 8/1/2023 at 11:54 AM, JChrisAero said:

Hey everyone, 

My wife and I are considering getting an M20C for cross country trips. Background: she's planning on starting a PhD in Northen Alabama, and neither we nor our families are near hub airports, so she suggested it might be worth buying a plane both so I can keep up my ratings and so we can use it to visit our families more easily back west (CO and AZ).
I'm a 150 Hr Cessna pilot with my high-performance endorsement, so I'd need a complex endorsement as well as transition training. I've done 8-hour cross countries before (CO-IN and back in an old 182) and they were long, but manageable, so on that front I think I know what I'm getting into.

I've also been reading everything I can about the gotchas of the M20C, especially an excellent old article by LASAR in 1996. I also work in aviation, specifically flight and accident/incident data analysis, so I have some good resources at my disposal for checking into the history of individual aircraft.

Our budget would be 40-60K for the aircraft, can be totally basic with no speed mods, ugly paint, etc. as long as its systems and airframe are sound.

Do you have any input or thoughts? Are we totally off our rockers? Opinions are helpful even if they sting

Thanks in advance!

 

That was a good price range pre-2020 but good luck now.  We have an E now but I'm still kicking myself for not jumping on a well equipped C in 2018.    If you're out West it probably isn't as big of a deal but flying IMC in the East I personally really really appreciate a good autopilot.  A friend and I both low time pilots recently flew similar approaches in IMC into different airports, but I have an autopilot and he doesn't.  I got the feeling his approach was a butt-puckering experience while mine was just a heightened alertness. He's a better pilot than me.