Morgan, it's true - large, unexpected costs are a normal part of the airplane ownership experience. Having owned all or part of several airplanes, I managed to get buy by adding 35% to the expected costs to cover unbudgeted liabilities. Sometimes there was an annual surplus, sometimes a deficit but it seemed to average out. But then, maybe I was lucky.

Could you upload your spreadsheet to a public DropBox folder and let us have the link. I kinda hate to put an e-mail address on RAS.


On Monday, July 14, 2014 11:13:00 AM UTC-6, Morgan wrote:
Bill,



I think I have what you are basically looking for. You'll have to adjust the variables for your scenario, but I did this breakdown years ago.



What has continually been a factor outside the ability to capture in a spreadsheet are the unexpected costs. The engine that hadn't been run routinely for the last 10 years or whatever prior to our acquisition and subsequent internal corrosion that resulted in a rebuild at 1200hrs instead of 2000..



Or the "oops" hangar rash that adds $2000 to your costs by surprise. The general stuff is pretty easy to calculate and pad for based on hours or tows.



Morgan







On Sunday, July 13, 2014 12:04:37 PM UTC-7, Bill D wrote:

On Sunday, July 13, 2014 11:05:38 AM UTC-6, noel.wade wrote:



On Tuesday, July 8, 2014 12:49:40 PM UTC-7, Bill D wrote:







I was hoping to find a spreadsheet where I could plug in variables like TBO, overhaul cost, fuel consumption, fuel price etc... Failing that, a workup for one tug might provide a methodology from which I could create my own spreadsheet.























Bill - I'm not trying to be obtuse; but it really does depend on a LOT of factors. Here are a few of the major factors:







1) The operational environment (club vs commercial, for example)







2) How you use the ship (regular tows? lots of high tows? double-tows? new towpilot checkout?)







3) Runway surface and condition (smooth grass, rough grass, compact dirt, asphalt, ??)







4) What kind of ship you use (Pawnee? SuperCub? Cherokee or C-182?)







5) How many tows per year you expect to do







6) How many total towplanes will you be operating







7) Local weather (goes to your hangar/storage requirements and how many months out of the year you can use the airplane)?







8) Financial "style" of your business/club (do you require a funded reserve account so that you can pay cash for maintenance and repairs when items hit their expected life-limit; or is using credit or loans - either commercial or private - an option)?







9) Commercial use of your equipment - Are you offering a lot of commercial glider rides, or flight instruction, or other use that requires you to pay taxes and/or perform more-frequent inspections on your towplane?















These items need to be decided/outlined before any accurate numbers can be factored - otherwise you're just firing blind.















Take care,















--Noel







Noel, you are not being obtuse at all - your points are excellent. I agree, there are a lOT of variables. To be clear, I'm not looking for actual costs because, as you say, they vary a lot from site to site for a lot of reasons.







I was just hoping someone had put all (or most) of those variables into a really big spreadsheet so different tug operations could plug in their particulars to more easily understand and budget their tug costs.