This is quite on topic. A long video again, but the important bit is after 21:58h.
Yeah… it is called a p-r-e-b-u-y 
Socata have always denied this but it is thought to be bad material, or improperly heat treated material.
In your research, do not forget that TB20 have some lifetime limitation on Wings, engine strut and gear mechanism (10000hours). I can see some very expensive TB20 that are also quite close to the 10K Hours…Finding a pair of wings on a TB can be a killer.
What I find strange is that aged TB20 ads (in the 8000k hours) were below 100Keuro 3 years ago, and now they are more in the 150 to 200 range – talking about asking price of course.
I am into a prebuy for a TB10 and budget is closer to 1/3 to a T20, a good prebuy should be 1 to 2 days of work, 1000 to 2000e, even 3000 but it will be spared money in the futur.
It is because the TB20 is a much better aircraft, at just a slightly higher opex.
It’s all in the MM.
The 8k hr TBs will be ex flying school ones so a lot more stuff to check. Lots of shagged out airframe parts, unless maintained to a high standard, which would be, ahem, unusual in the flight training business. Various examples like these which I would not touch.
But you can’t really get new wings. And stuff like that is incredibly expensive, for any GA type. A TB20 with 8k hrs TT is rationally worth very little, although if you got it really cheap, say a GT for < 100k, you will still get 2k hrs out of it (which for most people is 20+ years) and then you can part it out.
Mine is at 3k hrs.
Since nobody mentioned it so far, I’m going to do so, why not a C185? easy airplane to fly, albeit a bit challenging to master landings. Once you do manage good landings, you feel good though, only takes a few hundreds of them depending on your skill level to start with :-)
It can do short rough grass runways or field for that matter if that’s allowed where you fly (how rough depends on the wheels you have) as well as long hard runway, but, yes, it’s more playful on hard runway. The one we have only have 240l tanks but that’s enough for 5hours of flying plus minus depending on all the usual factor. But with full tanks, you can take 4 adults at 85kg each and 100kg of cargo in the back.
And you can put it on floats when you want to have some extra fun. What’s not to like?
And I forgot, manual flaps, one less thing relying on electrical power and it’s as fast as you can move the handle, and tailwheel so it looks cool.
All these arguments are, of course completely factual and not influenced whatsoever by any bias I might have towards this type of airplane :-)
I have never actually flown a C185. But a few thoughts:
I guess there no more than maybe 10-20 C185s in all of Europe, south of Scandinavia
FWIW our Cessna P210 is at around 3000hrs TT at 45YO and is also somewhat “life limited” to 10000-hr via a soft-limit where a lot of additional recurrent structural inspections are triggered and all windows are discarded at 13000-hr via airworthiness limitations. Window replacement is a major job, unlike non-pressurized aircraft.
SEP aircraft were never really intended to fly that long, but OTOH school aircraft can come close. I know one aeroclub which operates a C172 ( and am sure there are may others like it) which is at or around 13000hrs, and I wonder how many original components still remain…I know windows, at least one flap and one LDG leg have been replaced… When you think about it, 50 years and 13000hrs on and still up and running is quite amazing. In the commercial aircraft world, around 50000FC and twice as many hours tends to be an acceptable airframe limit.
How “hard” is the TB-20 limit? Is it a real airworthiness limitation?
C185-s are beautiful- , in my obviously unbiased view, amazingly-capable aircraft, in an objective data view.
boscomantico wrote:
I guess there no more than maybe 10-20 C185s in all of Europe, south of Scandinavia
That would be the real issue: you need to love the type.
WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:
WingsWaterAndWheels26-Oct-23 11:0836
Since nobody mentioned it so far, I’m going to do so, why not a C185? easy airplane to fly, albeit a bit challenging to master landings. Once you do manage good landings, you feel good though, only takes a few hundreds of them depending on your skill level to start with :-)
It can do short rough grass runways or field for that matter if that’s allowed where you fly (how rough depends on the wheels you have) as well as long hard runway, but, yes, it’s more playful on hard runway. The one we have only have 240l tanks but that’s enough for 5hours of flying plus minus depending on all the usual factor. But with full tanks, you can take 4 adults at 85kg each and 100kg of cargo in the back.
And you can put it on floats when you want to have some extra fun. What’s not to like?
And I forgot, manual flaps, one less thing relying on electrical power and it’s as fast as you can move the handle, and tailwheel so it looks cool.All these arguments are, of course completely factual and not influenced whatsoever by any bias I might have towards this type of airplane :-)
I love these, never flown one, but from all I´ve seen – extremely capable airplanes and certified, so can be used for many type of missions – probably why they command such a high selling price. It is however a tail dragger and a certified one. I´m not sure it´s a great airplane to use for it´s mission capable limited bush strips with low flying experience level – and even flying in an out of longer paved airfields the tail wheels operation on that type size of airframe will demand exposure/training/flying and in my perspective – but without personal type experience – a good amount of flying experience (not just cruising around on 3-5 hour trips) but actual aircraft handling. I would imagine a very high insurance cost, based on total flight time, time on type and not least taildragger. From the onset of what the OP has posted, I don´t think a C185 is anything of relevance.
