Yeah I guess I’d like to at least occasionally be able to fly to grass runways. I don’t want to spend more than £200k (and even then only if it comes with very nice avionics) otherwise £150k. So I guess it comes down to an older Skylane or a few commanders are up on the market at the moment. Would like to be able to do at least 130kt and have four seats.
Peter wrote:
Avoid due to the long list of ADs
The earlier 112 and 114 models had many ADs. For the later 114B and 115 models, I am only aware of the elevator spar recurring AD.
Parthurnax wrote:
Would like to be able to do at least 130kt and have four seats.
Depends how much cabin space you want and if you mean 4 seats or 4 people to take along. That is not necessarily the same.
The Grumman AA5B Tiger is a 140 kt airplane. The Piper Dakota as well. Both of those are usually under that budget.
There are Bonnies which would fit the budget too. They are hugely versatile airplanes. Particularly the Dakota and the Bonnies are also very decent gras airplanes.
A Cherokee 6 or Saratoga may fit into the budget too and has a very spacy cabin for 4 plus loads of baggage. It does 130-140 kts. The Lance, it’s retracable counterpart, is a 160 kt airplane. Both of those don’t do too bad on grass either.
Occasionally you will also find Cessna 210’s with decent avionics in that price range. And it can do a lot more than 130 kts and take 4-6 plus bags. And Cessnas generally are not doing too bad on grass.
Of all those, with your budget, I’d have a close look at Bonnies, followed by the 210 and the Lance. If you want 4 seats and good grass performance, look for a Dakota.
AlanB wrote:
Elevator Spa AD – cracks in elevator spar. Not a massive deal in itself, we fitted an AMC kit to ours which effectively strengthens the spa so it no longer subject to the checks required by the AD. But if there are cracks there it will cost a few K (3-4?) to fix and take a bit of time.Cracks around main gear spars – some of the earlier commanders suffered from this issue. Probably any that did are now out of service so maybe not an issue as Rockwell addressed this in later models I believe.
I read that this used to be an issue on older 114 but the newer production 114B and 115 have apparently fixed these in factory. Do you know of shops in the UK who have a lot of experience maintaining these aircraft? Also if you or somebody on the forum is aware of any CFIs to do initial training that’d be useful too!
@Mooney_Driver Don’t think I’d need 6 seats. More than happy with 4, probably flying with 0-2 passengers vast majority of the time. Bonnie would be excellent indeed. Currently in the UK there is a few for sale but all over 300k. One under 200k but it’s on N-reg. Only considering G-reg at the moment. Went to see an N-reg C182 a few months back, really beautiful aircraft, but ended up not buying because I found out from my A&P how expensive it’d be to bring it to G and I don’t have the time to fly to the US to get myself a piggy back. So in the interest of not wasting my own and seller’s time I don’t go and see N-regs anymore.
ASG in Guernsey is sort of a Commander specialist. See here.
