December marks my third year of aircraft ownership—the third anniversary of a winter morning when I flew out to an airport in Pennsylvania in AOPA’s ultra-gadgety Diamond DA40 and flew back in a Piper Cherokee 140 with a working automatic direction finder. I know that it works, because about 30 miles out from Frederick Municipal Airport, my colleague in the right seat fiddled with the device and picked up a bizarre broadcast of someone singing
a Christmas carol a cappella.
On that flight home, 7301J’s radios started a work-when-we-feel-like-it pattern that persists to this day. My first repair bill was from a visit to the avionics shop for some troubleshooting. Welcome to ownership.
I grumble (I think the entitlement to grumble is expressly noted somewhere in the pilot’s operating handbook), but the cost of ownership has been manageable. The yearly insurance tab for a 40-something airplane with a 160-horsepower engine is reasonable. When I compare it to the checks I’m constantly writing to State Farm to cover two young-adult drivers, it seems like a bargain.
Both of those young adults fly with me from time to time, so I upgraded the Cherokee’s front lap belts to B.A.S. Inc. shoulder harnesses. The kit was about $1,295 plus the cost of installation. I look
at it as a long-term safety investment, which somehow makes it a little easier
to swallow.
Outside of annuals, I’ve had to purchase a new tire and a new battery, and replace a seal in the nose gear. While inconvenient—although I guess unscheduled maintenance can’t ever be considered “convenient”—none of those repair bills was horrifying.
The annuals themselves are fairly straightforward, thanks to Mr. Piper’s simple design and the seemingly indestructible Lycoming engine. This year I did get a double whammy in the form of an airworthiness directive that required an inspection of the stabilator cables and turnbuckles, coupled with my A&P’s revelation that the fuel lines were original, and were quite brittle—and it probably would be advisable to replace them. In that situation, the only thing to do is gulp and write the check. Or, as my colleague Dave Hirschman says, “Put that money in the cannon and fire it.”
So, yes, I grumble. But I don’t grumble too much. Ownership has a lot going for it. My airplane is ready when I want to go, so I can fly on my schedule. That seems downright luxurious. I can make the kinds of flights I wanted to do while working on my private pilot certificate. I can spend a morning in pursuit of a $100 breakfast without having to worry about being back to the airport in time for someone else’s lesson. I can plan and execute cross-country trips because there are no restrictions on taking the airplane overnight, and no requirements that I must log a certain amount of Hobbs time to do so. Since purchasing 7301J, I’ve flown her from Maryland to North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin.
I can land on a grass strip if I wish. I haven’t managed to do that yet, but there’s always next year.
I can leave my headset and flight bag in the airplane without worrying that they will become someone else’s property. When I open the hangar, the airplane is there, in the same state as when I left. That means nobody else’s trash is there, and there’s nobody but me to blame if I forget to clean off the bugs, or don’t top off the tanks. I like the fact that when I open the hangar, the airplane inside is mine—bow-tie yokes, cigar lighter, ADF, and all.
I’ll probably be grumbling when the pitot and transponder inspection comes due. But the good thing about ownership is that it causes short-term memory loss. You forget those maintenance bills as soon as you open the hangar door and ready the airplane for your next adventure.
Related Articles
