My buddy Mike Rinaldi retired from United Airlines a couple of months ago and has a bad case of aviation withdrawal. The way to cure that, he decided, was to buy an airplane, and quickly. But which one? My wife, Deborah, has admired Cessna 170s for years, so she suggested that airplane to Mike.
After much consultation with all of his flying friends and endless hours perusing Trade-A-Plane and surfing the Internet, he concluded that a Cessna 170 would be just perfect. Deb and I agreed to pop for half. I, too, consulted friends who own Cessna 170s, asked what to look for, what maintenance headaches to expect, and so on.
Soon Mike and I were on our way to California in my Cessna 310 to look at a likely plane. We had high hopes. Mike had perused the pictures of this bird on the Internet and called the owner numerous times. He had a cashier's check in his pocket, we had blown 50 bucks on a title search — we were "serious buyers." So serious, in fact, that we carried extra charts and headsets in the airplane so Mike could fly the new one home.
The first 170 we had looked at was at our home field, North Las Vegas. The tail cone and elevator torque tube were heavily corroded. The plane had been tied outside for two years without an engine — or a rudder lock. The wind banging the rudder had broken the stops and bent the inside edges of both elevators. Neither the damage to the rudder nor to the elevators had been repaired. The owner was installing a mid-time engine, one that he said had been pickled for 30 years. Soon as he got it on she'd be ready, he said. Mike and I told him we'd think about it.
Buying an airplane is one of the great adventures in life. It rarely goes the way you think it will. Today, as usual, we have high hopes.
"This California guy says there's no corrosion on his plane," Mike told me again, for the fiftieth time, as we crossed the Sierras and got our first glimpse of the great interior valley of California. "I called him this morning and asked if the plane was sold. He said there's a guy coming to look tomorrow, but they don't have a deal. If we want it today, he'll sell it to us."
I told him about the time I flew to Los Angeles with one of my mechanic friends to look at a Cessna 185. The seller had sworn over the telephone that the logbooks were complete and the plane had never been damaged. He lied. The right wing had been damaged at some time in the past and the sheet metal repaired with nonstandard rivets. My mechanic, Steve Hall, pointed out the rivets. "I wouldn't pass a repair like this on an annual. These should be drilled out and replaced with the proper rivets. And the repairs to the inside of the wing should be inspected."
I examined the "complete" logbooks. What the seller hadn't told me was that the airplane had spent eight years in a Latin American country. South of the border they don't record maintenance or repairs or oil changes or anything else in the logbooks. What they do is this: Every year a government official whacks a fresh logbook page with a fancy rubber stamp and signs his name with a flourish. The logbook entries for the eight years this plane spent registered in Latin America consisted of eight stamps and eight signatures. Needless to say, I didn't buy the airplane.
"This California guy says his plane has spent its whole life in the U.S. of A.," Mike assured me.
As we aviated we talked about how cool it would be to own a Cessna 170. Only eight or nine gallons per hour, practicing our tailwheel skills we were pumped when we landed at the seller's airport. And there was the airplane, sitting by a mechanic's hangar, a 1951 Cessna 170A! A youngster was sitting in the cockpit. We introduced ourselves. This was the owner's son. He had just washed the airplane, he told us.
This airport was near the Pacific, so we searched diligently for corrosion. Looked OK, interior a little ratty, but all in all, pretty good. The mechanic had the logs, so Mike and I perused them over lunch. I really like old airplanes, and this one was over 50. Greed wrapped its slimy fingers around my heart.
"Yeah," I told Mike.
"Yeah," he told me.
The owner, I will call him "Fearless Freddy," put Mike in the copilot's seat and me in the back and away we went.
Flying with sellers can be very exciting, so I watched Fearless like a hawk from my perch in the backseat. The memory of the Piper Pacer that Deborah and I looked at a few years ago flashed through my mind. Deb immediately fell in love with it because it was "cute." She climbed into the right seat for a ride with the owner.
He taxied the Pacer out OK, lined it up on the runway, and gave it the gun. After a few exhilarating swerves, the airplane lifted off. Over the roar of the engine the owner said to Deborah, "That's all I know how to do. You'll have to land it." He released the controls and crossed his arms across his chest.
Deborah couldn't believe her ears. She had never flown a short-wing Piper. Here she was, going around the pattern with a man who now informed her that he had only flown this airplane three times in the year since he finished the total rebuild and conversion from Tri-Pacer. Without a nosewheel, the airplane scared him. He hadn't learned how to land it; in fact, he had never learned to land any tailwheel airplane. That didn't stop him, however, from shouting as Deborah landed the plane to put in right rudder, then jamming it in himself, sending the airplane skidding sideways toward the trees lining the runway while 10 feet off the ground.
On the downwind he informed her that his daughter could fly the airplane just great. Hunched over the yoke with this maniac in the left seat, Deborah was delighted to hear that news. "Of course," he continued, "I never let her land it. Too tricky."
I watched the landings from the side of the runway with misgivings. I had no idea that Deborah was fighting the owner for the controls. She won, thank God. After two landings, she taxied in and shut down. Her tan appeared faded, I noticed, and she looked very tired.
We bought the airplane anyway. Deborah had had enough flying that day, though. "You fly it home," she said firmly. "I'll drive the car."
Today in California, Fearless Freddy lined up his 51-year-old Cessna and pushed the throttle to the stop. He lifted the tail — and held the plane on the runway. It continued to accelerate, then began to crow hop, bouncing up and down on the spring-steel landing gear. Boing, boing. After an age of this he stopped pushing on the yoke and let her fly.
Mike turned and looked at me.
The airspeed indicator was having problems, which we decided was caused by water in the pitot tube, no doubt from her recent bath.
Fearless let Mike fly a little. A few turns, up and down a few hundred feet, a quick call to ATC to check the transponder, and that was about it. Mike pronounced himself satisfied. He turned the airplane back to Fearless, who made good radio calls as he reentered the pattern.
I kept waiting for Fearless to put in some flaps. He didn't bother. On base I asked subtly, "Uh, do you ever use flaps when you're landing this thing?"
"Not if there's any wind," he replied.
I looked at the windsock. Three or four knots from 30 degrees right.
We came swooping in at the speed of heat. Fearless Freddy flew right down to the runway, slowed the descent a trifle, and let the mains smack Mother Earth. We bounced. Boing, boing. Fearless made no aileron correction at all for the right crosswind. We rolled and rolled, and eventually the tail came down. Fearless used 3,000 feet of concrete to land his Cessna 170A.
Mike and I made eye contact again.
As we stood on the ramp, a fellow came over from an old straight-back Cessna 172 he had just landed and demanded of Mike, "You going to buy this plane?"
"I'm thinking about it," Mike replied testily. He moved away but the guy stayed right at his elbow.
I wandered off to see about fuel for the 310 while Mike negotiated.
Fifteen minutes later Mike, Fearless, and the man crossed the ramp to where I was watching a lineboy fuel the twin. Fearless and the other man stopped 50 feet away and continued their discussion.
"We got a deal," Mike said to me. "We'll pay his price, he'll have his mechanic blow out the pitot line, and he'll give us $375 for fixing the cowl latch."
"One broke?"
"Yeah, on the flight. They'll safety-wire it down and we'll get it fixed in Vegas."
"OK."
"We shook on it."
"Why is he talking to that other guy?"
"Oh, he wants to buy the plane too. But he's too late."
That's what we thought. After a bit Mike went over to where Fearless and the other guy were talking. The other guy offered a thousand more than Fearless asked. Fearless turned to Mike.
"I'm not going to pay a nickel more," Mike said. "You and I got a deal. We shook hands."
But now we didn't have a deal.
Mike came back and told me what was going on. "Fearless says he feels terrible to be put in this position. I told him he put himself in this position. We shook hands — let's do the deal. But he is still talking to this other guy."
"Let's go," I said. "There're other planes."
Mike went back to talk some more.
Fifteen minutes later he returned with a check. The other guy offered to pay $2,000 more than Fearless was asking for the plane and to absorb the cost of fixing the broken cowl latch himself — Fearless accepted. Mike had pointed out that we spent $500 flying over here today on Fearless' representation that he would sell us the airplane if we paid his price. The other guy offered to pay us the five hundred. Mike added that he had spent 50 bucks for a title search. So Fearless wrote Mike a check for $550, which was added to the purchase price, which was now $2,550 more than Fearless was asking.
On the way home we shook our heads. "I guess that extra $2,000 was more important than his word," Mike said.
"You know and I know that he got us and that other guy there today to bid against each other."
"And it worked."
His face brightened. He pulled the check from his shirt pocket and looked at it. "What the heck! They paid for our flying today, and we get to go look at another one, one of these days."
"Sure is fun to look," I told him, with a grin.
Mike laughed. "Fearless is a hell of a pilot, isn't he? That's the first time I ever saw anyone crow hop a takeoff. I loved your question about the flaps. And did you ever see a landing like that?"
The Sierras were as gorgeous going home as they had been coming out.
Novelist Stephen Coonts did succeed in acquiring another half an airplane — he and Mike are now the proud owners of a 1953 Cessna 170B.
