I am definitely going to be watching all of the pre-buy. I love messing
with mechanical things!! As for partnerships go.. I found a guy in my
flying club that has way more money than me and not as much time. I
thought that this would suit me perfectly. :-) Time will tell I guess...

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney purchaser


Louis L. Perley III wrote:

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...

buying my first airplane? Better hurry because Monday we have the
prebuy inspection to go thru. If that goes well then probably by the end
of next week I'll be an airplane owner (co-owner actually). I have
really gotten a lot out of this and the Mooney owners news and email
groups. It appears that we have found a clean '79 M20J for a decent
price. I am paying more then I originally bugeted but welcome to
aviation right? I figure that I would take the plunge in a plane that I
can use for a while with out feeling like I need to upgrade right away.
I have a feeling that that is what would happen if I would have bought a
152 or Warrior. The Mooney can hold 4 people and cruise at 150 knots on
10 gph. I think that will satify me for a while anyway. Anyone have
any regrets about airplane ownership they care to share?

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney purchaser



Jump right in, and if you can, participate in the prebuy (take the day off
if you have to, or call in sick it wouldn't be lying, as aviation can
properly be termed an illness, although it's a healthy kind of illness),
you'll learn alot and your mechanic can point out many things to look out
for that will come in handy as an owner. Mooney's make a pretty decent
instrument platform as well from what I hear. Regardless of what kind of
plane you buy, be it a Cessna 152 or a King Air, by this time next year
you'll be thinking about getting something a bit more. This is just human
nature I guess. If it fits your normal mission profile, great! Just don't be
one of those people who buys a plane and then never makes the time to fly
it.. This probably won't be much of a problem since it'll be co-owned. I
hope you know your co-owner real well and have a pretty solid agreement in
place between the two of you. I can speak from experiance that if it's not
laid out in detail, it can fall apart pretty quickly, this would be my only
caution. I've had 1/2 of an aircraft that's ended up sitting on the ground
for two+ years because my co-owners refuse to get things done, and when I
said to heck with it and offered to pay to get it annualed out of my own
pocket, they refused, and since the ownership is 50/50 I'm powerless to do
anything about it (shops on the field won't touch it because they don't want
to get in the middle of the situation, which is understandable). Only
recently, when they've decided to move from the area have they been willing
to let me buy out their half of the airplane. Hopefully we'll get that taken
care of this week and it will no longer be an issue.