Impulse Finally Wins

I bought an airplane.  

More appropriately, I bought into the experience of owning an airplane, with its highs and its lows, its uncertainties and its lessons learned, its disappiontments and its momnets of exuberance.  It's often said that the best days in an aircraft owner's life are the day they buy it and the day they sell it.  This marks the prior.

Sales webpage photo of N704TV (white box is to cover the broker's name)

N704TV was cheap.  Not by pre-COVID standards, but by today's standards.  And when something is cheap in aviation, that's your first red flag.  It was listed by a large aircraft broker in Indiana, and caught my eye while I was on vacation, continuing a multi-year stretch of thinking about buying an airplane, but not actually doing it.  But 4TV (better name forthcoming perhaps), met my mission:

• Cheap to acquire with the option to customize to my preferences later.
• Cheap to eventually operate.
• Something that would allow me to finish my CFI and eventually train my son in.

In truth, I have two missions.  One is for a plane to carry my family of four and I on fun trips/adventures.  But the airplanes that meet that mission are too expensive.  It's not that I can't afford it -  it's that I don't want to.  I don't want to spend $120K on a clapped out Chickenhawk, and I certainly don't want to spend $300K on an older Cirrus.  I don't need to fly.  Nobody does.  It's nice, I love it, it makes me happy - it's definitely something I can put a value on, though, and no four place was going to hit that for me - at least not in the post-Pandemic works of used aircraft prices.  

My second mission, for which 4TV was purchased, was really just to get into the sky - something I wasn't doing a whole lot renting from flight schools or even as a member of a flying club.  More on that later.

The purpose of this blog is really three-fold.  First, I want a place to communicate all of the feelings mentioned above - for myself.  I like to write, I'm pretty good at it, and at some point it becomes cathartic.  

Second, if anyone buys 4TV off of me in the future, I want them to have the whole, honest to God story.  I don't have it in me to scam someone or hide anything.  That was done to me in some ways with this aircraft purchase, and I have too much dignity to do that to someone else.  Hopefully whomever buys 4TV in the future (if I sell it) gets sent this blog link from me and can get the complete picture of what they're stepping into.

Finally, I'm hoping to share my leanings along the way with anyone interested in listening.  Throwing the rope back down, so to speak, as in nearly three-decades of being a pilot (of some sort), I've certainly learned greatly from those willing to share their experiences.  So now I pay it forward.

More to come - welcome aboard.