When Is It Time to Quit?
Since I had the day off from work, I thought it would be a nice thing to take myself flying. So, I showed up at the airport on Valentine’s Day at eight o’clock in the morning underneath a fresh, sunny sky to go fly. Everything was looking good during the preflight until I was lying down beneath the wing on the passenger side and noticed a rubber seal along the fuselage-to-wing juncture didn’t look right. Instead of being pressed flat against the edge of the airplane, its outer edge was curled like waves in a sea storm. I pulled the seal back a little bit and saw the tell-tale blue stain of 100 Low-Lead gasoline. Following it, I watched the small blue ribbon of liquid flow backwards to form a pool and a drip off the wing’s trailing edge. Great! I’ve got a gas leak! I wasn’t going to get off the ground today. Again.
I immediately called my wife and told her the bad news, making the case that it was time to get out of the aircraft ownership business. I was putting the airplane in the shop more than I was flying it, and we had pushed our finances to the brink to bring the airplane up to speed. Yet, every time I thought we had finally caught up and were starting to get ahead, the airplane taught me differently. This was no exception. We had no sooner spent over a grand getting the carburetor rebuilt than an exhaust leak showed up that’s proving difficult to eliminate. My mechanic swore the exhaust system was tight but an exhaust smell was still coming through. Additionally, while I was now happy with the airplane’s wintertime performance, I still felt we’d be back in the “unhappy” category during the upcoming supper months. I had been considering sticking a Powerflow system on it for some time; and with some probability our exhaust leak was in the muffler or its associated plumbing, I decided to order the PowerFlow and possibly kill two birds with one stone.
Now, only a few days after I placed that $4300 order, the damn gas leak shows up.
Bill came up to Pearland and looked at our bird. While we had all hoped the leak might be a seal or something else associated with the sump tank, he told me I wasn’t so lucky. The leak appeared to be at the inboard wing rib. They had drained the fuel out of the right wing tank and put as much of it as they could in the other wing, and the airplane is now in his shop. Bill’s initial estimate of the financial damage is in the $750 range. I’m laying aside a grand and hoping it’s no worse than that.
One can argue it’s time to cancel the PowerFlow order; but I’m not going to do that. I’m determined to try to get the airplane into passably “happy” shape, though I’m under no illusions about the airplane not needing more repairs. In fact, our plan is to top the engine out at the 2009 annual and add the high-compression STC to it.
Hopefully, very expensive repairs needed just to keep the airplane airworthy between now and then won’t wreck that plan. But I wouldn’t bet on it…
You may ask why we haven’t looked at selling the plane. We have, over and over again. Connie really likes having an airplane instantly accessible to us and reminds me of how we escaped the horrors of Houston’s Hurricane Rita Evacuation with it. That was the Cheetah’s one shining moment. But another reason we keep it is to be able to respond to family emergencies in a timelier manner than we might otherwise, and it just flunked that test when it leaked gas. We needed it last week; though, admittedly, even if the airplane had been up, the weather would have prevented us from making the trip even under IFR. It’s the idea of the airplane being up enough to be ready for such a thing and it wasn’t that bugs me.
Admittedly, the Cheetah is in significantly better mechanical shape than it has ever been since in quite some time, probably since it was new. But that yields little solace when I’m forking out every bit of free cash I have and then some to just keep it flying. I guess that’s the reality of owning a 30 year old airplane and making the mistakes of a first-time buyer, despite having done every recommended thing I could to avoid them. After several years of this, I realized I had grossly underestimated the cash I would need to keep going, so I restructured my finances to give me more cash flow at the risk of some future retirement income. My wife and I have examined the question: “When is it time to quit?” many times and have not yet come up with a good answer. The used aircraft market is soft and not likely to get better anytime soon even if the economy recovers; there are too many threats – increasing gas prices, user fees, the cost of aircraft maintenance- to make owning a used airplane very attractive to an outsider. A more important question for most aircraft owners may not be whether we can get out if we need to, but how can we get out the most inexpensively. For us, the worst case scenario is we both lose our jobs and can’t get the loan payments together before the airplane is repossessed. The second worse case is we can’t sell the airplane but can afford to make the payments, in which case we put the airplane on the line and let it sit until it’s paid off. Then, if we can’t afford to put it back into shape, we could at least look into donating the thing to charity and take the tax write-off.
Since we’re both working and not in immediate jeopardy of any job losses, we’re taking the tact that the Cheetah is here to stay. That means we will be sinking money into upgrades as well as what it takes to keep her in the air. Financially, it is proving to be the most difficult thing I have attempted. Whether it will pay off in other ways or prove to be futile effort, only time will tell.
In any case, I told you I had ordered the PowerFlow system, and I am still awaiting its arrival. Despite the setback of the fuel tank leak, I decided I was not going to let the airplane defeat me and to press ahead with the PF upgrade. Not only am I expecting to put the airplane’s performance into the “summertime acceptable” category, but Connie and I have both noticed exhaust fumes in the cockpit. My mechanic and I have made some efforts to eliminate them, and my mechanic swears the exhaust system is tight, yet the fumes are still there. I not only had other Cheetah owners swear that the PF made a significant difference in the airplane’s climb performance, but one of them “testified” that adding it solved a carbon monoxide problem in his cockpit as well. Hopefully, it will do the same for us.
But I am not counting on anything.
I immediately called my wife and told her the bad news, making the case that it was time to get out of the aircraft ownership business. I was putting the airplane in the shop more than I was flying it, and we had pushed our finances to the brink to bring the airplane up to speed. Yet, every time I thought we had finally caught up and were starting to get ahead, the airplane taught me differently. This was no exception. We had no sooner spent over a grand getting the carburetor rebuilt than an exhaust leak showed up that’s proving difficult to eliminate. My mechanic swore the exhaust system was tight but an exhaust smell was still coming through. Additionally, while I was now happy with the airplane’s wintertime performance, I still felt we’d be back in the “unhappy” category during the upcoming supper months. I had been considering sticking a Powerflow system on it for some time; and with some probability our exhaust leak was in the muffler or its associated plumbing, I decided to order the PowerFlow and possibly kill two birds with one stone.
Now, only a few days after I placed that $4300 order, the damn gas leak shows up.
Bill came up to Pearland and looked at our bird. While we had all hoped the leak might be a seal or something else associated with the sump tank, he told me I wasn’t so lucky. The leak appeared to be at the inboard wing rib. They had drained the fuel out of the right wing tank and put as much of it as they could in the other wing, and the airplane is now in his shop. Bill’s initial estimate of the financial damage is in the $750 range. I’m laying aside a grand and hoping it’s no worse than that.
One can argue it’s time to cancel the PowerFlow order; but I’m not going to do that. I’m determined to try to get the airplane into passably “happy” shape, though I’m under no illusions about the airplane not needing more repairs. In fact, our plan is to top the engine out at the 2009 annual and add the high-compression STC to it.
Hopefully, very expensive repairs needed just to keep the airplane airworthy between now and then won’t wreck that plan. But I wouldn’t bet on it…
You may ask why we haven’t looked at selling the plane. We have, over and over again. Connie really likes having an airplane instantly accessible to us and reminds me of how we escaped the horrors of Houston’s Hurricane Rita Evacuation with it. That was the Cheetah’s one shining moment. But another reason we keep it is to be able to respond to family emergencies in a timelier manner than we might otherwise, and it just flunked that test when it leaked gas. We needed it last week; though, admittedly, even if the airplane had been up, the weather would have prevented us from making the trip even under IFR. It’s the idea of the airplane being up enough to be ready for such a thing and it wasn’t that bugs me.
Admittedly, the Cheetah is in significantly better mechanical shape than it has ever been since in quite some time, probably since it was new. But that yields little solace when I’m forking out every bit of free cash I have and then some to just keep it flying. I guess that’s the reality of owning a 30 year old airplane and making the mistakes of a first-time buyer, despite having done every recommended thing I could to avoid them. After several years of this, I realized I had grossly underestimated the cash I would need to keep going, so I restructured my finances to give me more cash flow at the risk of some future retirement income. My wife and I have examined the question: “When is it time to quit?” many times and have not yet come up with a good answer. The used aircraft market is soft and not likely to get better anytime soon even if the economy recovers; there are too many threats – increasing gas prices, user fees, the cost of aircraft maintenance- to make owning a used airplane very attractive to an outsider. A more important question for most aircraft owners may not be whether we can get out if we need to, but how can we get out the most inexpensively. For us, the worst case scenario is we both lose our jobs and can’t get the loan payments together before the airplane is repossessed. The second worse case is we can’t sell the airplane but can afford to make the payments, in which case we put the airplane on the line and let it sit until it’s paid off. Then, if we can’t afford to put it back into shape, we could at least look into donating the thing to charity and take the tax write-off.
Since we’re both working and not in immediate jeopardy of any job losses, we’re taking the tact that the Cheetah is here to stay. That means we will be sinking money into upgrades as well as what it takes to keep her in the air. Financially, it is proving to be the most difficult thing I have attempted. Whether it will pay off in other ways or prove to be futile effort, only time will tell.
In any case, I told you I had ordered the PowerFlow system, and I am still awaiting its arrival. Despite the setback of the fuel tank leak, I decided I was not going to let the airplane defeat me and to press ahead with the PF upgrade. Not only am I expecting to put the airplane’s performance into the “summertime acceptable” category, but Connie and I have both noticed exhaust fumes in the cockpit. My mechanic and I have made some efforts to eliminate them, and my mechanic swears the exhaust system is tight, yet the fumes are still there. I not only had other Cheetah owners swear that the PF made a significant difference in the airplane’s climb performance, but one of them “testified” that adding it solved a carbon monoxide problem in his cockpit as well. Hopefully, it will do the same for us.
But I am not counting on anything.
posted by Andy Foster at 5:27 AM
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