Buy cheap buy twice
Doing your homework is vital, if we look at a very simple aircraft like the Cessna 152 most people on this forum will tell you the value should be in the £19-21K
area but a quick look at the aircraft that fit this price range will find a lot of under maintained aircraft with high time engines, old avionics, shabby interiors, fading paint........Oh there will also be a small leak in one of the brakes that should not be too much of a problem.
So how much to get the aircraft into a reasonable condition ?
Overhauled engine £14,000
New paint. £6000
Basic avionics £6000 ( new NAV/COM & mode S transponder )
Seat recovering & carpets £1000
Oh the small leak from the brake turns out to be a crack in the McCaully brake unit and those are no longer avalable so it is a new wheel & brake unit kit at £2000.
So all of a sudden with IRO £29k to find to put your £19 k steal into some sort of working order you wish you had gone to the joker who wanted £35k for an aircraft with most of this work done but you passed that one up because the flying club bar flys said it was way over price !
Oh and now the maintenance company tells you that the McCaully propellor has failed one of the string of AD's and you will have to buy a new Sensench prop kit because McCaully don't make the prop any more............Say didn't the £35k aircraft have one of the low maintenance Sensenich props?........ Another £2.2 k goes west !
My advice is to find the aircraft type that you like and then go to a maintenance company who operate the type, talk to the engineers NOT the salesman and buy near the top of the market, otherwise you will find out just how true the Old Arab proverb " cheap is not so cheap" is.
Last edited by A and C; 14th Oct 2012 at 08:35.