BUYING THE RIGHT NEW AIRPLANE

The most important factor in buying a new airplane is to know your mission statement. For me it is owning a plane that will fly in the Western US and the Rocky Mountains, that I can accomplish my mission without refueling. A fuel stop usually takes an hour after descending, fueling and climbing out of an airport. The other factor to consider is one’s bladder. For my wife that is usually 3 hours, but I think she could go 4. Therefore I want something that is fast that could get me to my destination quicker. I have not considered a plane for the few missions that would take me further as they are 1 to 2 time events a year. Useful load is not a factor either as it is usually just myself, my wife and luggage in the plane. I have narrowed down my needs to 6 airplanes. I am talking new here, but for all but 5 of these planes you can buy used and save $250,000 or more on a two year old airplane. Only 1 of my 6 would have to be bought new, as it is a brand new airplane. BEECHCRAFT BONANZA G36 The Beech would probably be the easiest of airplanes on my list to transition to having flown a VTail for the past 20 years. It is a stable IFR platform, and the best news is that it would fit in my current T Hangar. Not much has changed in the G36 over the years except the avionics, currently supporting the Garmin 1000 NXI. Everyone I have talked to stated that the NXI has a faster processor, but I have heard no one complain about the G 1000 avionics. I thing I would have to get used to on any retractable is that the gear is on the left side and flaps on the right, which is opposite of my VTail. I would have to be extra careful when lowering the gear. Useful load with full fuel, 74 gallons usable, is 558#. Maximum cruise speed is 176kts. Downsides are that Beech still uses rubber fuel bladders, the engine is not turbocharged and no speed brakes. The non turbocharged engine is a deal breaker for me as it is very hot in Scottsdale in the summer, and I would want something that could get out of the heat quickly and maintain full power flying over the mountains. The price new is another sticking point at $850K. Cessna TTx and Cirrus SR22 I have combined these 2 planes as they are very similar. The TTx is $810K and SR 22 $860K. Both have basically the same engines. With a wing span of 36 feet the TTx could fit in my hangar. The Cirrus at 38 feet 4 inches would be a very tight fit and subject to hangar rash. Also I could not walk around the wing once in my hangar. With full fuel the TTx can hold 458# with a maximum weight of 770# in the cockpit with less fuel. With full fuel you would have to burn off about 1.5 hours of fuel before landing. SR22 has a bigger cabin with a useful load full fuel of 578#. Both have a higher ceiling of 25,000 feet than the Beech 18,500 feet. Two things I really like on the TTx are speed brakes and Garmin G 2000. I find the G 2000 to have less button pushing. The big advantage goes to SR22 with the parachute. I feel this is the number one reason that Cirrus outsells all other GA aircraft. The sales comparison between the two planes is greatly in favor of the Cirrus. PIPER MATRIX This is my sleeper plane in the group. The Matrix is a Malibu without the pressurization. It has the most room inside of any of the aforementioned airplanes. I have not inquired if a potty can be installed, but that would be another plus. The wing span is 43 feet and definitely could not fit in my T Hangar. Useful load with 120 gallons of avgas is 635#. If my wife got tired she could move to the back and lie down. The Matrix has three screens for the G 1000 NXI which provides more information than any of the previously mentioned airplanes. Maximum cruise is 213 kts, a bit slower than the TTx at 235kts and equal to the Cirrus at 213 kts. Maximum altitude is also 25,000 feet. Piper has lowered the price to $900K but with options such as speed brakes cost would be around $950K. This plane has the same engine as the Malibu. As I said earlier this would be an excellent option for me. Piper M350 (Malibu) Basically the same plane as the Matrix but it has pressurization. If I was going to fly high than this would be my first choice at $1.3M. The 350 has a useful load of 588# with full fuel. DIAMOND DA 62 TWIN If I had the need for a hight useful load airplane this would be the one. The useful load with full fuel is 989#. It comes in either a 5 or 7 seat model. The wing span is the largest in the group at 47 feet 7 inches. The DA 62 burns jet a in its diesel engines. The fuel burn can be less than any of the others using two engines, 11.8 gallons at 60% power. Maximum cruise is 190 kts. There is plenty of room inside, and ingress and egress are easy with the gull wing doors. I do not need the load carrying capabilities so I have ruled out the DA 62 at $1.3M. As I stated earlier all these planes, except the DA 62, can be bought used at considerable savings. In the end I have narrowed down my choice to a used Matrix or Malibu. For some reason the Matrix has not been a good seller. There are not as many used available as the others, and therefore you might be able to buy a used Malibu for a better price than a used Matrix. Will I do this? Good question. I am reaching the end of my flying career and have to make a decision at this time in life if I want to buy another plane. If I do I have made my decision easier by studying all available airplanes that fit my mission.

AIRPLANE OWNERS PODCAST

Guest this week with host David Fill now available on ITUNES

SEDONA, ARIZONA

May, 2014 I published a post on flying the WACO in Sedona. Unfortunately the owner of that operation passed away and the WACO's were sold. They still do tours of Sedona and the Grand Canyon using Cessna 206's.

That being said Sedona (SEZ) is still one of my favorite airports to fly into. Normal landing is on 3 uphill and takeoff on 21 downhill if winds permit, which about 90% of the time it usually does. Pilots say it is like landing on an aircraft carrier that is not moving. Two things to remember are: SEZ sits on top of a 500 foot mesa and if windy there will be a lot of sink at the beginning of the runway. Do not aim at the Numbers as you have plenty of runway here; the other being SEZ is at 4830 feet, and especially in the summer, density altitude is even higher...so use your mixture as recommended.

There is plenty of aircraft parking and a beautiful terminal building. There used to be one of the greatest airport restaurants on the field many years ago with excellent food and prices. Someone decided to tear down their building and build a new "high class" restaurant. Unfortunately things are not the same with new ownership. Food leaves a lot to be desired, service is poor and the prices are high. This is the only negative thing I can say about the airport. People used to fly into SEZ by the droves for a breakfast run and breathtaking views, with the new restaurant activity severely declined.

An opening came up for Aviation Director at SEZ. Amanda Shankland was assistant Aviation Director in Flagstaff, AZ (FLG) working for my good friend Barney Helmick. I first met Barney when he was with the City of Phoenix Aviation Department and then Aviation Director of Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR). Barney later took the job at FLG and trained Amanda there. He must have done a super job as what Amanda is doing at SEZ is all positive for the Airport and the City.

Amanda came up with a program to rent cars at the airport for $10 and hour. One could then make a beautiful drive through the Red Rocks, have an excellent breakfast and return for $20 of rental car fees. I recommend the Red Rock Cafe for breakfast. Additionally the FBO, Red Rock Aviation, lowered their fuel price to $4.28/gl out of the truck.

The restaurants lease is up soon and hopefully a true airport restaurant will replace it. Self fuel operation is being looked at and possibly building a lager restaurant for the field. I really commend what Amanda has accomplished for general aviation (GA) at SEZ in such a short time.

 I am trying to get the same program put in at Prescott, AZ (PRC) which is about 10 miles from historic downtown. One setback for PRC is fuel is very high at the Self Serve, which means the City would have more tourism and money spent downtown and nothing at the airport as those flying in can port fuel. The other airport is FLG where there is not a restaurant available on the field for GA. FLG has a beautiful downtown area. Both PRC and FLG could greatly benefit in the summer because of their cooler temperatures. I hope that John Cox of PRC and Barney Helmick of FLG will not let Amanda show them up.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Most people do not like lawyers...until you need one. Then there are specialities where if you need an aviation attorney you can not use your estate planning attorney and so on.

I have a good friend who started flying in his early 50's. He trained on glass Diamond DA40, and when he got his private ticket decided to buy a brand new Piper Saratoga. He has no debt or children and paid cash for his airplane. A few years later he built a large spec home which did not sell quickly and needed some cash and sold his Saratoga. About 4 months later his house sold and he bought another Piper Saratoga.

Now he is in his young 60's and decided to upgrade to a late model Piper Malibu. He worked a deal with Keystone, a Piper dealer, in Salt Lake City. Unfortunately he never obtained any advice from friends in the aviation community and made the deal. From what he told me about this 11/2 YO Malibu after the purchase it had different cylinders changed 7 times in 11/2 years. That would have led me to believe this engine had a problem that was not addressed in just changing out cylinders. It would be a plane that I would have walked away from. He did a real faux pas in letting Keystone do the pre buy on this airplane.  If there is one thing I was taught at an early age is to never use the selling party or their mechanic do the pre buy.

He flew up to Salt Lake to pick up the plane with a Malibu certified CFI and flew it back to Scottsdale. His insurance company required he take 25 hours of dual before flying solo. When he finished his 25 hours the engine had approximately 320 hours on it. His first solo the plane lost power and he was able to return to SDL. When he did a runup the plane again lost power. He took the plane to a FBO on the field that works on Malibu's and they could not replicate the problem. He then went to fly it again and lost power before lifting off.

After taking it back to the FBO they found several issues under the cowling. Cylinders did not pass the torque test and there was oil in the bottom of the cowl. The FBO called Lycoming, and Lycoming never sent anyone out to look at the engine. The second year warranty only covered cylinders. My friend made calls to Keystone and Piper as well as Lycoming. He was told by Piper we will look into it, and they were aware of this plane and the troubles it had in the past. He also found out that this plane had loss of power problems before. He relayed this to Keystone and again was politely blown off. Keystone never came to SDL to look at the plane.

So now my friend has a $1M investment that has been grounded for four weeks of phone calls and emails. I told him all along that no one would do anything until an attorney was involved. He ran it by his personal attorney, and I explained that he had to involve an aviation attorney who speaks the language.

Finally he went to see an aviation attorney here and had everything documented for the attorney. The attorney wrote a demand letter to Keystone for knowingly selling a lemon of an airplane and gave them 2 choices. One was to return the money and his Saratoga or put in a new engine firewall forward and overhaul the propeller. After several back and forth phone calls and emails Keystone agreed to do as requested verbally but never signed the agreement as was. A lawsuit was prepared for fraud and other reasons and served to Keystone. The next day they agreed to do everything as requested.

It will take about 4 weeks for a new engine to arrive and in the meantime the prop will be overhauled. My friend will be down for 16 weeks before he can be back in the air.

As I said earlier his first mistake was letting Keystone do the pre buy. The fox was in the henhouse. A reputable shop would first review the logbooks and say something is not right with this airplane. He was lucky that he had deep pockets where he could sue Keystone, and if necessary Piper and or Lycoming. We are all glad it did not come to this. If there is something that does not sit right about an airplane purchase pass and go on to the next one.

Everything I have written was told to me by my friend who purchased the plane, and I am passing on the information as given to me.

FLYING TO THE EAST COAST IN MY BONAZA...OR NOT

I have only done one real long cross country. My wife and I decided to fly from Scottsdale to Victoria and Vancouver in our 1954 V Tail Bonanza. This was several years ago pre IPad days. I purchased VFR Sectionals for Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. I also had a Jeppesen subscription for the Western United States. The only electronic device we had was a Garmin 396 portable GPS.

It took hours to plan our trip for fuel stops. Our trip was planned for August which gave us the best shot at good weather. We decided to go the long way to San Francisco so that I could fly my wife over the Hearst Castle and Big Sur. Unfortunately there was a cloud layer below us and no visibility. Our first stop was Oakland and we took BART into the City. Our hotel was only a 2 block walk. That night we had an early dinner with a fraternity brother and departed for Seattle the next morning. We had a planned fuel stop along the way and used VFR flight following as we did on our whole trip. 

The beauty of traveling by general aviation is if we like a place we stayed longer, and conversely if we did not we left earlier. Seattle was just fantastic with clear skies and great weather, and we added an extra day there. Next stop was Victoria, British Columbia. The ceiling was low on departure day and we waited for the weather to break. It took me a couple of hours to realize that we were at sea level with no mountains in the way and decided to fly over at 2,500 feet. Out west I am used to flying 8,000-12,000 feet. My wife said this part of the trip was the best flight she ever had. The views were fantastic. Upon reaching Victoria Class Charlie airspace ATC asked us to climb to 3,500 feet. Not having IFR charts I said unable. ATC asked if I see the Caravan in front of us which I did, and they said to follow it for landing. We pulled into the customs circle and were cleaning up the cockpit while customs was checking out a turboprop parked next to us. Customs left and walked into their office. I told Pam to go ask customs to come out and clear us. They asked if we were in the Bonanza. Pam said yes and customs gave her a number and we were cleared. We loved Vitoria some of the friendliest people we ever met and again stayed longer. Then we moved on to Vancouver which was outstanding.

Next stop was Portland. We had dinner with a cousin. I do not mean to offend anyone, but Portland was not one of our favorite places so we left early to spend more time in San Francisco. 

Our last stop was in Los Angeles to celebrate my Aunt’s 90th birthday, and then we headed home to Scottsdale.

My wife and I talked for years about doing a cross country trip to New Orleans, Auburn (my undergraduate school) and Atlanta. My Mom, Sister and daughter all live in Atlanta along with many friends and fraternity brothers. Unfortunately my wife had to have a kidney transplant 3 years ago, then the following year she went into kidney rejection so we delayed the trip for 3 years.

This was the year to go. Planning is a lot different now with APPS such as ForeFlight. I loaded the preferred IFR routing for our trip, and I removed unnecessary waypoints for VFR flying. Next was to plan fuel stops and overnights. What took many hours before with paper sectionals only took 2 hours to plan with ForeFlight. I then called the FBO’s where we planned to spend the night enroute to our destinations. Our first overnight was in Junction, Texas. When I called the FBO manager who lived on the airport and would take us to our hotel and pick us up the next morning. The other stop coming home said they would give us a car for the night. Many years ago I remember airports doing this, not so much anymore. 

Our stops were also planned with ForeFlights for fuel pricing. It made a major difference in where we decided to stop. Fuel in New Mexico and across Texas was around $3.50 a gallon. If we stopped in a major city such as Austin, Texas you could just about double the price.

I started planning this trip in December 2016, and our plan was to depart the first week of April 2017. We were in no hurry, and if the weather was bad we could just delay our departure. As it turned out the weather was horrible in Texas and Louisiana. 

Then a funny thing happened. My wife spiked a fever that she could not shake 8 weeks before our planned departure. Being a kidney transplant fevers are a bad thing, and I took her to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital with a bad infection. After several tests this infection spread to her heart. She had to have her Mitral valve replaced and bypass surgery two weeks after she was admitted. They had to get the kidney infection under control before heart surgery. She was recovering in the ICU and a week later moved to a room on the Telemetry floor. During heart surgery you are given a lot of fluid and my wife was having trouble removing the fluid from her heart. All the Docs felt she was okay to go home. The nurse helped Pam get dressed and Pam sat down, could not breathe and had chest pain. She coded right in front of me and the room was full of doctors. They were able to bring her back and rushed her back into the ICU. She was stable that night but coded again the next morning and was rushed into surgery where they removed the excess fluid from her heart. The heart is now working great but when you loose all blood pressure the kidney takes on a lot of damage. Pam has now been in the hospital for 7 weeks and still has a slow process of 8 more weeks to remove fluid on her body that the kidney can not by dialysis.

Bless my wife. She was more worried about cancelling our trip then her problems. She is a strong woman. I told her to worry about getting well so we can make our trip in 2018.

So that is my story of our almost cross country to the East Coast. It will happen, it will just take a little longer than expected.

FAA AND ALTENATIVE FACTS

The FAA has new airliner flight plans that cover Southern California.  Recently there have been numerous noise complaints from La Jolla down the coast to Point Loma in San Diego. The FAA in its infinite wisdom blames all the increased noise on flights at Montgomery Field (MYF) in San Diego. In public meetings the FAA states that all increase in airplane noise is from MYF due to winds and atmospheric conditions. This is the FAA presenting alternative facts better known as lies.

I have flown in and out of MYF over 100 times. There is a Class Bravo over the top of MYF. One can fly in from the south through the Bravo, VFR over Gillespie Field (SEE) VFR or in from the ocean. There are ocean corridors substantially off shore for sight seeing and banner towing. Nothing has changed with respect to GA.

The FAA is full of manure to suggest noise increases are originating from MYF.  With the FAA caving on the closure of SantaMonica (SMO), there is now a precedence for the closure of airports if the community places enough pressure on the City Council. Facts do not matter as in the SMO case.

If the community is not properly educated, they believe what they hear from the FAA and would put closure pressure on MYF. The public has to be told the truth. I have not seen a response from AOPA on this issue and am sending this column to them.

We can not stand to sit back and allow the FAA to spread its lies knowing they will not support General Aviation Airports. Hopefully the residents in this area are smart enough to know they are being snowed by the FAA. It is my hope that AOPA will be at the next public meeting to debunk the lies of the FAA. I for one do not want to loose any more GA airports.

AIRPLANE OWNERS PODCAST

I was a guest today on the Airplane Owners Podcast with host David Fill. Discussing all things aviation.

You can download this podcast on iTunes episode 54.