Actually better scrap this thread and find that out first.
Indeed. Make sure that
MedEwok wrote:
Budget wise it is a question of buy a cheap old plane now (20 – 30k€) or wait for greater budgetary leeway in the future
I am one of those who sais waiting for the time you can afford something “better” robs you of the time a nice economic 4 seater can give you lovely flights over that time. There are much more old folks sitting in the airport bar and telling how bad ownership is because early in their lifes they decided to wait for the best plane and never beame owners in the first place.
I bought my first plane (C150) when I was below 20 (I had a small business selling airplanes then and this one stayed with me) for less than what today would be 6k Euros. I did a ot of flying in in and had a lot of fun. Uncomplicated, the airplane was very easy to operate and simply fun.
Out of that, there are plenty of very economical 4 seaters which will accomodate your family of 2+2 plus ample baggage and most will also fit a stroller.
My favorite load carrier out of that is the PA28-180, the predecessor of the Archer. It can carry up to 320 kg and full fuel which will give you a range of about 550 NM with 45 mins VFR reserve. Fuelled up to the filler necks with 38 USG, it can load about 350 kg and still fly respectable VFR legs of more than 350 NM. It has decent short field performance and is very forgiving.
There are also a lot of older Cessna 172´s available, which have slightly larger baggage areas and shorter range. Those I have in my database are mosty equipped with 150 hp engines (as opposed to 180 hp) and will travel about 400 NM with 270 kg on board.
One very nice plane (but out of budget for now mostly) is the Cherokee 235. It hauls enormeous loads and is about 130 kts fast, but flies almost as benign as the PA28-180 does.
Some times there are TB10´s for sale in your price range too. They have a nice big cabin (like the TB20) but are fixed gear and prop. I donßt have any performance figures for the TB10, but I would expect it to be near those of the PA28, it will be more expensive though.
If you want to make a larger step and still stay in the budget, you can try for a Vintage Mooney such as a G or F model. With your family, I´d vote against a C or E due to the short body and the lack of space on the rear seat, but an F or G will give you ample space and weight. It will travel 145 kt (F) with the same hourly consumption than the PA28 and will fly around 700 NM with full tanks. An F has about the same space inside than a PA28 but is much faster and a lot more economical.
There are others, some have been named. 6 seaters are nice to have but for your family they can well wait.
For your size, all I can say is go try them on. There are many around to try on your local airfield and elsewhere and most owners will gladly talk to you about their planes (most of them will talk you right into the ground once they get started) and let you try them on. There might also be some which will take you along on a flight. You will be surprised about some airplanes, believe me.
MedEwok wrote:
Realistically usage will be no more than 30 hours a year for the next couple of years, might get more after then. Does it make sense at all to buy for such a low-hours pilot?
30 hrs is very few. Generally, a plane will be more economical than renting after up to 100 hrs normally. With up to 50 hours however, you only have to do the annual/100 hrs check per year, which also saves a bit of money. That is one side of it. The other one is that your own plane against rented airplanes will give you a huge degee of freedom you never have in a rented plane.
There is one big advantage to renting for beginners though and that is that you can try out various types without risk. For the first year or so that is a very valid point.
MedEwok wrote:
Better leave that open yet and find out how much my wife goes along with shorter trips.
Yes. That is very important indeed. Start with short trips, but always keep in mind that wifes (and kids) won´t come fly just for the flying but for what it can do for them! I know quite a few pilots who stopped flying after a year for flat refusal of their spouses to come along. When I asked what they had done, the answer was always the same: 100€ Burger runs and sit in airfield restaurants talking planes with other such misguided folks. Bad tactics. If the family find out however that you can be at the beach in 50 minutes instead of 4 hours and spend a nice afternoon on the islands before a leasurly trip back, or can go to other to them attractive places much more painlessly then by car, that is a very different ball game.
You have a lot of time in front of you, but I think you can seriously think about something in your price range once you find out how your family likes flying. Only, if you want to fly a budget plane with them, keep them away from shiny new Cirrus or similar planes for now :) It would be difficult to get them to fly in a 50 year old budget plane once they have seen a Cirrus or similar.
The aeroplane you describe is a Piper Aztec.
Good post Mooney Driver
Doc, I think you’re bonkers. But please don’t take that as a criticism, least of all from an Englishman who’s only 14 hours into his second PPL.
At PPL plus 30 hours a year you’ll be in the so-called “killing zone” for a decade or so, but if others can survive that, so can you.
Don’t even consider renting. If you buy a plane you’ll feel obliged to fly it – ideally more than 30 hours a year.
If your budget is finite, the bigger, fancier, more fragile, complicated and expensive your plane, the less you will fly it.
If you want to fly, rather than just pay hangar fees, buy a tough, reliable plane which has good spares availability and is readily bought and sold. Probably like the one you trained in. I bought and flew various Cessna 1xx for more than 500 hours before I tried to kick the habit. I still like them.
And finally, to answer your question: it pains me to say this (not least because it’s rather French) but I’ve seen a Jodel D140 swallow four adults, a few suitcases and some cardboard boxes before proceeding to depart from Megève. Don’t be put off by the somewhat rearward position of the nosewheel. If people who can’t tell a taxiway or lake from a runway can cope with that sort of defect, it can’t be difficult. And, as a friend once remarked to me, “difficile ne veut pas dire désagréable”.
That said, the voice of reason is what you’ve read from more experienced and sensible pilots here. Consider buying a simple two seat spamcan, fly it like you stole it for 2-3 years, and then flog it when you’re ready to step up to a Bonanza – or down to a Maule or C180.
Aviathor wrote:
What is the secret?
There is no secret. Either they like it, or they don’t. All the usual car with children problems comes up, only more exaggerated. You have to concentrate on flying, you cannot simply pull over in the air, which means your wife has to do it all alone, in a noisy cockpit. Children are children, also in the air. I child may love it one minute, and hate it the next, for no particular reason.
So far I have never met such a happy flying family. I’m sure they exist though. People win in lottery also, all the time, even though the chances are one in a million. Why should you do it? is it for yourself, for your wife, or for your children?
But OK, lets play along The answer is of course an RV-10.
I’m in the owning camp myself. I see no point in renting, if the goal is to own. Just jump right in and own – you’ll become a better informed aviator because of it. And probably fly more. I also think most syndicates I see are really bad deals – they’re perpetually stranded in 1990’s pricing structures asking ridiculous amounts for a 1/4 share of some 50 year old plane. Ponzi schemes come to mind.
There are happy flying families. I know a few personally.
I don’t buy into the “spend a few years trying different things to see what you like” point of view. It is OK for somebody who is basically clueless, i.e. most people when they first get a PPL. Especially growing up in the very sterile world of the flying school.
But not everybody is like that. Some people are learning to fly for a reason i.e. they are basically aware of their mission profile. I was one of these people, for example. The best advice to these people is to buy a plane which fits that mission profile ASAP and not waste time and money messing about lower down. If you want say a TB20 for your desired profile then every hour you are renting a PA28-161 for €200 (or whatever) is money wasted because you are building currency in the wrong machine. And safety is probably 90% about currency. I bought the TB20 a year after getting the PPL. That year was spent looking at planes and working out how to get some money together… Probably the only plane nobody suggested I buy was a Spitfire
Medewok appears to me to be quite intelligent and capable of working out what he wants to do. That isn’t the case for at least 90% of PPL students. Perhaps half are doing the PPL for no reason at all – just to tick a “lifestyle achievement” box. These give up immediately they finish. Of the rest, most will not fly for long for various other reasons. We have had many threads on why people give up… Here in the UK some 90% do not renew their medical at the 2 year point. So it is rare to see someone focused on the job and I think the right advice is to get a plane which fits that job.
And there will be a number of options.
However I don’t think you can get a plane which will do this for €30k, in a good condition. At that level it is almost sure to be a clapped out maintenance money sponge.
I’m in the owning camp myself. I see no point in renting, if the goal is to own. Just jump right in and own – you’ll become a better informed aviator because of it. And probably fly more.
I agree 100%.
I also think most syndicates I see are really bad deals – they’re perpetually stranded in 1990’s pricing structures asking ridiculous amounts for a 1/4 share of some 50 year old plane.
Shares are usually overpriced because they are more affordable 
So, yes, most syndicate planes are overvalued. However, it is still the best way to go if you can’t afford to buy whole and maintain it alone. Renting is very expensive and delivers the highest marginal cost and thus the greatest disincentive to building currency. Also, in most (not all) cases, rental planes are clapped out junk, maintained to the lowest standard possible.
Mark_B wrote:
The aeroplane you describe is a Piper Aztec.
That was exactly my thought.
Twins get a lot of grief on forums like this, mostly from people who have never owned, operated or flown them.
But there are a lot of people who have been round the block a few times, and who are competent, intelligent businessmen, who choose to operate them, so there must be some logic or reasoning behind it.
The first thing is that when it comes to mission profile, almost every single is going to be a compromise in one way or another, but mostly in payload and physical size, whereas many twins make your profile a doddle.
With the Aztec in particular, you can largely throw away the W & B calculator, it is remarkable what they can carry. This is less true of other twins – the Twin Comanche and early Senecas are very limited in their loads, for example, but there are a number of very competent machines to choose between.
The Aztec will take your family and both the bulk and weight of all you baggage, prams etc You might consider taking out the third row of seats and having a cavernous, freighter sized, loading bay in the back.
Aztecs can be bought for virtually nothing. Probably cheaper than the Archers and AA5Bs mentioned here, and much cheaper than the PA32s, C182s, Cirri etc.
The downside, of course, is fuel and maintenance costs, which will be much higher, but there are a number of ways to justify that. Firstly, capital costs have to be paid up front but running costs come from future earnings, so you are less concerned about fluctuations in lending rates (goodness knows how Brexit is going to screw the European and world economy over the next ten years.) Secondly, it gives a huge sense of reassurance that you are paying for almost all of your systems to be duplicated – not just engines, but alternators, vacuum pumps, fuel pumps and so on, which many people would consider pretty important when flying everyone they love most in the world.
And that last point brings me on to the myths.
The biggest myth is about exposure to risk. Because some twins are vulnerable to a mishandled EFATO, either because they are under powered (Seneca I for example) or over powered (King Air for example), they have all be painted with the same brush of being unsuitable for low houred pilots. But most sensible twins sit between, and the Aztec is the most docile of them all. An engine failure after take-off is almost a non-event. If you screw up badly, for example by not raising the gear, it will still climb away, and, if you do it reasonably correctly, its performance in the climb won’t be far off that of a slightly wheezy single.
The tales of aircraft going over on their backs come from the combination of high powered machines in the hands of ill-prepared pilots. There are some gruesome videos on YouTube, but they are in King Airs and Queen Airs, not Aztec puppy dogs. There are equally plenty of ways to die in a single, and there are plenty of stories of fatal accidents resulting from engine failure – usually over unforgiving terrain or water.
The other myth is that it is difficult to learn to fly an MEP. Yes, there are more procedures to learn, and you definitely have to keep those procedures in the forefront of your mind, particularly on take-off, but if you are capable of becoming a high-earning medical doctor, there will be no problem with your memorising and executing the procedures when required. Just stay in practice, and think about it in quiet moments, and you’ll be fine.
So, do have a think about finding a capable twin, preferably in a small group, as being a better, though more expensive, way of meeting and exceeding your profile.
There is no secret. Either they like it, or they don’t.
Initially that is certainly true. But the trick is not to disgust them from flying. There has to be something in it for them. And that something is not necessarily the flying itself, but more the destination and the whole experience.
Yes. That is very important indeed. Start with short trips, but always keep in mind that wifes (and kids) won´t come fly just for the flying but for what it can do for them! I know quite a few pilots who stopped flying after a year for flat refusal of their spouses to come along. When I asked what they had done, the answer was always the same: 100€ Burger runs and sit in airfield restaurants talking planes with other such misguided folks.
Indeed
Indeed. Make sure that
* all flights you do with her are in nice wx
* accidents are not discussed (and brief any pilot visitors to your house accordingly)
I think that is good advice. I would add
