What do you all look for in the logbooks you receive? Honest question. I request logbooks when buying, too, but usually just look through and it’s like “yup, they changed the oil.”
I did find out and reject one airplane that had been flipped upside down, but that wasn’t in the logbooks - it was in the NTSB records.
Curious what you all look for?
Oh many things. Mainly, usage frequency amortized for the previous 36 months. That's the big one for me. Some of us disregard an airplane outright if the use has been lower than our trigger point (personal secret sauce I'm not going to divulge). I'm much less concerned about TT (especially since I'm a buy low sell low participant anyways) than use frequency on a 36 month basis. That's why I value higher time engines with more frequent use, than paying a premium on a time bomb low SMOH engine suffering from sparse use but higher paper resale. Ask
@ircphoenix (if he's still around) if that is or is not the case when it came to his first time ownership experience.
Then we look at time-to-go for repetitive ADs coming up, especially the big dollar ones uninformed buyers get snarled into, that the seller hopes the buyer is ignorant to. Additionally, big step functions expenditures followed by immediate for-sale is also indicative of the state of mind of the seller, or a precarious financial position that may or may not be of relevance in proferring a discounted offer. The logs tend to forensically hint at these subtexts especially when the 36 month lookback is devoid of entries. But that's more 3D chess stuff that's secondary to me than what I've described previously.
I've never elicited the services of an AP to conduct a pre-buy on my behalf, especially out of state. I'm not saying this is fool proof, but I have not felt I've been surprised by the hobby in approaching it this way. When I travel to the airplane is merely to verify the stated condition of the agreement, test fly, and cut the check. I accept the engine as a black box based on amortized use (I do verify data plates, did find one airplane with the wrong engine SN bolted to it, lol I ran from that mess). Otherwise, oh but for the grace of God go I.
I don't put much stock in out-of-state 3rd parties who are still local to the airplane, too much graft and dereliction for an inspection product with very unenforceable legal assurances. Plenty of sob stories on here for you to read about the trail of tears of owners dissatisfied, if not outright ripped off, by so called pre buys. But again, that's me, my risk tolerance, and 3 well-worn airplanes down the ownership path, sole-owned. Your monkey your circus.
A seller that is not forthcoming with scanned logs? Pft, next!
