BUYING AND MAINTAINING AN AIRPLANE

I got interested in aviation at a very young age. My Dad died when I was young, and we moved out of our house into a high rise condo in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. As luck would have it our neighbor Charlie Dolson, who was the third Chairman of Delta Airlines took me under his wing. He took me for a ride in a Cessna 172. After that I was hooked. Too young to get Certified, I flew with others every chance I got. I went off to College to play ball. My junior year I tore up my knee. Knee surgery was not very good in 1969. I was in the first year of the Draft lottery, pulled a low number and had to go take a physical, which just about everyone passed, and enlisted with the Air Force. Back then Delta was only taking pilots from the military. I went to take my flight physical and flunked with flying colors, and the AirForce said goodbye. After that I worked hard on rehabilitating my knee and decided to give my other sport baseball a try. My Godfather was President of the Yankees and he gave me a non-roster spot at A Ball in Fort Lauderdale. I could still hit but had very little lateral movement and lost some speed. All during this time I had not been flying at all. I had to get an occupation, which turned out a good career for me. Getting married and having children put a hold on my flying for years. I took up flying later in life and have been Certificated for over thirty years having owned a glider, Cherokee 180, Mooney 201 and my current Bonanza for 20 years. When I got into ownership I took the advice of others before buying an airplane. The one thing I always did was to have an annual performed before completing any transaction. I used a mechanic who was familiar with the airplane that had not worked on the purchase airplane. I also had a written agreement with the seller that the seller would pay to repair anything deemed necessary at annual. If it was something major and the seller did not want to repair the airplane they could pay all my expenses to date. With no disrespect to those who do prebuys, I do not believe you can find all issues wrong with an airplane by just performing a prebuy. Even after doing an annual and purchasing the plane I always found small things that needed fixing. With the advent of social media I have floated out questions on my Bonanza to members in the Vintage Bonanza Group. I was surprised at some of the responses which definitely would not be advantageous to my Bonanza. You really have to throughly investigate things to be sure your are doing the right thing. I listen to many podcast. I will be the first to admit I am not mechanically inclined. I do change my own oil and filter between annuals. The best podcast I have listened to is Airplane Owner Maintenance with Dean Showwalter. He had an episode that turned into two episodes on how to start a cold engine. I had always gone by the book and cracked my throttle three times to start the plane. When it came to life the RPM's went way over 1000. Dean suggested to to leave the throttle completely closed and start the airplane. It worked! Now I start up at 600 RPM's wait for the oil pressure to come up and gradually open the throttle to 800 RPM's. Do not forget to lean the mixture back to prevent any fouling of the plugs. This would have saved me a lot of wear and tear on the engine if I had know about it earlier. When it comes to maintenance I have tried them all. I have used independent mechanics and shops. I have found the independents not as through, major FBO's too through and too expensive. When I moved my plane to Scottsdale, SDL, I have a friend that has a shop that mostly services his flight school airplanes. The three guys working there have between them about 110 years of experience working on piston aircraft. The first annual cost a little bit more as I figured it would, but since then things have been fine. Remember I am flying a 63 year old Bonanza so it will take a little more maintenance to keep it happy. At this stage in my life I am hoping to see young people get into aviation to replace me. If you are flying for pleasure it is hard at a young age to do this. House and car payments along with starting a family eat up a lot of disposable income. Most young people I am involved with are flying to become an airline pilot. This too is very expensive. I have recommended that people think about joining the service. If you do 2 ten's then you have a full pension from the service and still have approximately another 25 years you can fly for the airlines. Wishing everyone well.