Airplane of the Month • October 2002

There were about 15 planes in the auction and I could view them on a web site they had set up. I made visual choices based on the statistics they had published. They were within a short cross country from me, so I flew there to inspect them. After 3 visits I had narrowed it down pretty well. The bid process was closed bid. I bid on them all. Most were ridiculously low but what the hay. Who knows, might get lucky? As it turns out N93488 was my 3rd choice ( and only viable one, the first 2 were out of my reach but I shot a price anyway). I got a call from the auction board and was told that I was tied with another person on the bid (lesson: never bid even numbers). I submitted a second bid and won.

After all paper work and exchange of money, it was time to pick it up. That was probably my most stressful flight. Is that vibration supposed to be there? What was that? I'm sure you can relate. Of course the first thing you do after buying the plane is decide you didn't spend enough and need to put more into it. Deemers tips (oops, dropped the little red glass on the nav light. Holy cow $15 bucks! Is this thing hand blown?), wheel pants, prop upgrade, hey I can use another radio, what about an audio panel? Glide slope receiver would be nice. Can't have too many instruments (who's gonna put all this stuff in?). Don't want to get lost. Better get a portable GPS. What? Clock stopped working? The tach doesn't seem to keep the run time correctly. Better get those fixed.

Well after several trips to the salvage yards in this part of the country, scouring eBay and two annuals later, I gotta say, I sure wish the stock market bubble hadn't burst when it did! Now if I could just figure out how to land it at the house...

[Posted October 1, 2002]