Ted
The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2007
- Messages
- 29,907
- Display Name
Display name:
iFlyNothing
If you've been following the saga of Cloud Nine's airplane upgrade, you'll know that earlier this year we sold the 310 and purchased a 414. Without a doubt, this has been the right move for the organization. We're flying twice as many dogs on about 20% more fuel. In just 4 transports, we've already flown 153 dogs. Two of those transports had some empty crates because the groups didn't believe me when I said double the capacity! I expect the average will come out to be around 45 dogs per trip with this plane.
In order to make the finances of the purchase work, we had to buy a project plane. This was really a very good example that has a lot of room to grow in many ways. Projects aren't for everyone, but I'm good with them. It's a 1977 414 with low TTAF, which makes it a desirable bird. It had also been sitting for about 6 years. There are certain risk areas that came with this, one of them was the props.
Sure enough, after about 60 hours on the plane (in 3 months), at the conclusion of the last trip we found red dye on the right spinner. Pulled it, did some clean-up and a run-up (per the McCauley manual) and found this:
Keep in mind: the plane went through annual and the props looked perfect, with absolutely no signs of an issue. But, Permatex can fail at any time, which is what happened here. After 20 years SPOH, this is not an unexpected event.
Also, one of the prop de-ice boots has had the wire come off on the other side, so it needs attention. Because of the age of their propellers and the fact they are no longer supported by McCauley, there are few shops that are able to work on them. As a non-profit organization, we were able to negotiate a very good discount on a set of new propellers that will be a significant upgrade, so that's the route we will go. Of course, now comes the fun part of fund raising (more info on the Cloud Nine Facebook page for anyone who's interested).
Often times when people see an airplane that's sitting, they wonder if it's worth buying or not. It looks fine, it checks out, it passes annual, what could go wrong? One of my statements has always been that you should expect an airplane that's been sitting to have some failures after you've been flying it a bit. This is a very real example of what can happen.
We're not having any buyer's remorse. I still stand by the upgrade and the statement that it's been the right move for the organization and for our mission (both current and our still planned expansion to fly stretcher patients). I just wanted to share what happened to us and can happen when buying a sitting airplane.
In order to make the finances of the purchase work, we had to buy a project plane. This was really a very good example that has a lot of room to grow in many ways. Projects aren't for everyone, but I'm good with them. It's a 1977 414 with low TTAF, which makes it a desirable bird. It had also been sitting for about 6 years. There are certain risk areas that came with this, one of them was the props.
Sure enough, after about 60 hours on the plane (in 3 months), at the conclusion of the last trip we found red dye on the right spinner. Pulled it, did some clean-up and a run-up (per the McCauley manual) and found this:
Keep in mind: the plane went through annual and the props looked perfect, with absolutely no signs of an issue. But, Permatex can fail at any time, which is what happened here. After 20 years SPOH, this is not an unexpected event.
Also, one of the prop de-ice boots has had the wire come off on the other side, so it needs attention. Because of the age of their propellers and the fact they are no longer supported by McCauley, there are few shops that are able to work on them. As a non-profit organization, we were able to negotiate a very good discount on a set of new propellers that will be a significant upgrade, so that's the route we will go. Of course, now comes the fun part of fund raising (more info on the Cloud Nine Facebook page for anyone who's interested).
Often times when people see an airplane that's sitting, they wonder if it's worth buying or not. It looks fine, it checks out, it passes annual, what could go wrong? One of my statements has always been that you should expect an airplane that's been sitting to have some failures after you've been flying it a bit. This is a very real example of what can happen.
We're not having any buyer's remorse. I still stand by the upgrade and the statement that it's been the right move for the organization and for our mission (both current and our still planned expansion to fly stretcher patients). I just wanted to share what happened to us and can happen when buying a sitting airplane.
