Coupers, The comments below are addressed primarily to those who are considering buying a plane for the first time...
I read somewhere that if you are thinking about buying an airplane you should take it to a reputable shop, one that the present owner has never done business with, and pay for a COMPLETE ANNUAL INSPECTION yourself. Pre-buy inspections are generally not thorough enough, especially since if the inspector misses somehting important, his only liability with a pre-buy is to say "Gee, sorry, I didn't see that." If you pay for an annual, the IA should be a little more likely to inspect the plane thoroughly. If serious problems are found during the annual, you can negotiate with the selller over who pays to fix the problem. If you can't agree on who pays, you can tell him to keep his airplane and walk away. Eating the cost of an annual inspection is cheap compared to bringing home your new plane and finding out later that both wings are eaten up with corossion, or that the engine needs to be overhauled. If the seller is not willing to let you have the plane annualed, I wouldn't buy it. There's no reason that a reasonable seller should refuse to let you pay to have a plane annualed if the plane is in good shape. Buying a plane that has "just been annualed last month" could be going looking for trouble. There is a high likelihood that the annual was not very thorough, or that some costly maintenance items were deferred. If you were going to sell your airplane next month, how much would you be willing to spend on repairing marginal items? Of course, there are exceptions. There are planes out there that have had excellent maintenance, and are offered for sale with a fresh annual. You have to judge each case individually. But if you don't know anything about the plane or the seller, as is the usual case, paying for a thourough annual is cheap insurance. IMHO, trying to save the $300 or so that it would cost to have an annual inspection done (and I mean just the inspection, not the repairs) by an unbiased shop is silly when you compare that $300 to the cost of rebuilding a set of wings, or the cost of an engine overhaul. Just my 2 cents worth. Wayne DelRossi Alon N5618F Simpsonville SC
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