Buying First Aircraft
 

Hi..
I am looking to buy my first aircraft. I have about £120k to spend. I am a PPL pilot with about 150 hours P1 and have just passed my IMC. I have flown 50 hours in the last yeay and will probably now be geting up to 70 hours next year.
I have flown most of my hours in a warrior III. I have flown about 15 hours in DA40 & I have tried Cessna's. I never really liked the high wings.
I am considering buying a DA40, does anyone have experience owning or sharing one?
This will be the first airfraft I am buying. What I do not have is spare time to start messing about with constant maintenance. I really need something reliable with little down time.
Apart from a DA 40, what other newish Aircraft should I be looking at?
I would like to hear from other owners of newish aircraft & their experience in owning.

For those hours, and not wanting too much much maintenance overhead, buy a share. Really really, buy a share.

G

If you decide on a composite aircraft it is essential that you get someone who knows about composites to inspect it for you, damage to composite structures is hard to detect as are poor repairs.

Dont let this put you off composite aircraft, just take the proper precautions when buying.

Valuing A/C and shares prior to purchase.
 

Hi Everybody,

I should like to ask a question, supplementary to Willy's, that Willy too might find useful.

In the UK we seem to have a sufficient number of engineering companies able to assess the technical condition of an aeroplane for sale, but can this service also include an assessment of value for money?

In the USA there seem to be companies that specialise in valuing aeroplanes (or by extension shares in aeroplanes) for an intending purchaser. So far as I know, we do not have such companies here.

Is there anybody in the UK that can provide this service?

BroomstickPilot

I think you also need to consider how much you are prepared to spend per year to fly your estimated 70 hours. I think your hourly cost could be very high as a sole owner / user.

Robin DR400 Ecoflyer might be worth a look.

Robin 400CDi EcoFlyer

Rod1

Check your PMs.

Some thoughts on a low hour pilot with a high value sole-owned aeroplane here.

Economically, 70 hrs per year for that sort of investment just doesn't make sense. If you were flying maybe 300hrs per year, it *might* make sense, but not under 150 hours pa, in my opinion.

Time-wise, owning an aeroplane outright involves quite a lot of management, maintenance oversight and so-on. Joint owning the aeroplane means that other people share that burden - but until the aeroplane starts to see in excess of 300 hours per year, there is seldom any conflict over aircraft availability. Realistically however, an 8th or even 12th share in a good aeroplane will give you everything you want, for a lot less outlay.

Experience-wise, sharing your first aeroplane with other people, gives support and expertise that will help you a great deal as you mature as a pilot and an aeroplane owner.

I know nothing about the sellers or individual aeroplane, but this advert for example shows a high value aeroplane, as a quarter share, for a quarter of the money you propose to spend., and at a quarter share more than enough availability for anything you're likely to want.

Then spend a chunk of the cash left over on flying, and flying training, so that you're current and competent enough not to emulate the idiot in the SR20 - report in my first link above.

G

Having owned three aircraft on my own, I would advise as strongly as possible to share ownership with someone else. You NEED someone else to share your experiences, worries and problems - not always of a financial kind.
Also buy an aircraft that you can some day sell and get maintained, think very carefully about permit aircraft unless you are involved in the building yourself. Don't forget that an aircraft is being sold for a reason and neither the seller (nor you when you sell) will mention it's bad points.

The summary states "The aircraft adopted an unusual attitude while the pilot’s attention was directed to the autopilot and GPS controls on the centre console. On recognising this unusual attitude, the pilot made a brief attempt to recover control before activating the aircraft’s ballistic recovery system. The aircraft descended under the parachute and landed in open ground."

Which part of that indicates that the sole ownership of the aircraft contributed to the accident? Lack of experience was clearly a factor but I doubt ownership of the aircraft had anything to do with it.

Have you thought about a breezer? Breezer aircraft UK, sales, service and training an LSA with a 10 year record with no fatal accidents, german designed and built all metal aircraft! Saw one the other day and it looked excellent! Especially with the dynon synthetic vision avionics etc.

Josh

Flyer96
 

You should read the requirement that has been set out for this aircraft acquisition, the guy require an aircraft for IMC flight. The breezer can't do that and like all the string of ultralight aircraft has next to no payload.
As to the " no fatal accident" statement ............ Well that is just a matter of luck after a recent incident.

For those wishing to travel ( in IMC ) with passengers and more than a toothbrush as baggage the DR400 & DA40 are realistic options, not any of the ultralights.

Lack of oversight.

Renting, that flight wouldn't have been authorised by any sensible flying club.

In a syndicate, my experience is that pilots who do daft things without proper training or enough experience (or just daft things) get firmly talked to. Or at-least have somebody there they can talk to if they are unsure of their decisions.


An example I just got in my email today, from a member of a syndicate I'm in - somebody wants to do a long trip and has emailed out saying he's not confident of doing it on his own because he's not current enough, and asking if one of the more experienced syndicate members could fly with him. This, to me, is sensible and one of the major benefits of being in a syndicate.

G

A and C

I know nothing about the breezer (would love a go), But I am certain that in the UK, it is not, and never will be, an ultralight.

Rod1

Its not any flying club's responsibility to ensure that all flights by their members are (a) safe (b) sensible or (c) whether the pilot is qualified to fly it.

In the case you've quoted, the pilot had no IMCR or IR, had over 100 hours on the aircraft and the flight could have been done VFR. So, if the guy had rented an aircraft from Turweston and said that he was planning to fly to Ireland VFR, I doubt anyone would have stopped him doing so. I've done a number of VFR flights under a solid layer of cloud at 3000 ft (albeit I have an IMCR). What caught him out was flying into IMC on a VFR flight, nothing to do with sole ownership of the aircraft.

ROD1
 

A slip of the keyboard I should have said LSA rather than ultralight, but it still fails to get away from the fact that this class of aircraft are very limited in terms of payload and getting more limited by the day as the manufactures find that they are under built for day to day service and so have to beef up parts of the airframe increasing the weight as they do so.

Totally disagree with that statement, assuming that the member is flying one of the club's aircraft.
I would certainly want to make sure anyone who wished to hire an aircraft off us was qualified to undertake the proposed flight. Indeed our booking system monitors the expiry dates of customers medicals, licences & ratings, also when they flew last for currency purposes. You can just imagine the hassle from the "no win-no fee" industry, if anyone was injured and there was a problem with the pilot's qualifications. Equally, the insurance company will look for any reason not to pay out on a potential claim.
As to safe and sensible, as Genghis points out, one of the advantages of flying within a club or syndicate environment, is that you have other people to ask if you are unsure of your planned flight. I've certainly stopped PPLs setting off on "unwise" flights in club aircraft in the past and I'm sure I'll have to keep doing it on a regular basis as long as I remain a FI.

Neither LSA nor ultralight exist in Britain.

However it's certainly true that most aeroplanes under 600kg MTOW, regardless of legal classification, are pretty short of useable payload.

G

As above, neither LSA nor ultralight exist in UK. The category that does exist is VLA. VLA is up to 750kg and many will lift two adults, 4 hours of fuel and bags. Does not alter the fact that VLA is daytime VFR only so not relevant in this case but does add to the confusion.

Rod1

There is nothing wrong with spending 120k on ones first plane. I spent nearly 2x that 9 years ago and never regretted it. At the time i had a PPL and IMC only.
The real problem is that ownership in this game is not like a Merc etc. It is a big learning curve and for various reasons to do with the way this business is structured (putting it very politely) there are many pitfalls for the unwary. There is no such thing as a trouble free aircraft especially a Diamond which give constant trouble to schools who operate them. My TB20 is more or less such (which is why i am typing this on the beach at LGKC, on that horrid piece of crap called an Ipad so sorry for the grammar) but that comes at a heavy expenditure in time and micromanagent of everything down to not sending the magneto to a certain uk shyster for an overhaul and sending it to the USA instead...