Reflections on a year of aircraft ownership

Since the last one seemed to work pretty well, here's another
cross-posted shot at injecting some relevant content into the group.

My glider's condition inspection was due last month. When I bought my
share, one of the things I did as part of preparing to take ownership of
my share was to help out with last year's inspection (which gave me a
lot of valuable insight as to what everything looked like down in the
guts), meaning that it's now been a year since I bought into it.

So far I do not regret my decision to purchase in the least. I was wary
going into it, partly because owning an aircraft was something new to
me, and partly because this particular glider is much higher performance
and more complex (flaps and retractable gear) than anything I'd flown
before.

The performance and complexity turned out not to be a problem. The
ASW-20 got built in large numbers and is considered a "classic" for good
reason. I found it to be responsive without being twitchy, to handle
docilely, and to have no real bad habits. It took me about six months
before I got used to the flaps (they can be used for landing, but their
primary purpose is to increase efficiency in normal flight, so I'm
constantly moving them around as I change speeds) but ultimately that
was also no big deal. And, while the machine experienced a gear-up
landing in the spring, it wasn't me, the guy with almost no experience
in retractables, but my partner, who has probably spent more time in the
air than I've spent alive.

Owning an aircraft also wasn't a problem, although it's certainly been
more work than simply using club aircraft. While I originally wanted to
own an entire glider outright, it turned out that buying into a
partnership was an incredibly smart move, because that gave me an
instant ready pool of knowledge. Assembly/disassembly, trailering,
inspection preparations, instrument usage, installing a gear warning
system, diagnosing an unresponsive airspeed indicator, all of this was
helped enormously by having partners (and also by having the seller
nearby).

Money wasn't a worry to me, but it's still something I thought about. So
far, so good. I put 55.4 hours on it over the past year, and my share of
the costs have been around $700, which works out to under $13/hour.
Beats renting club aircraft, even ignoring the fact that mine is far,
far nicer than the club's. (Of course I'm cleverly ignoring opportunity
cost on the purchase price, depreciation, etc., and I still have to pay
the regular rate for tows, but still, it's nicely cheap.)

On the plus side, wow, what a machine. I love this glider the way a
normal person might love a woman. It's just an absolute joy to fly.

The performance is incredible. The book promises a 43:1 glide ratio, and
it delivers. At high speeds, it still flies practically flat. On a good
day I'll just set off cross country spontaneously, and only once in the
past year have I not made it back home. (And even then I still made it
to an airport.) Climb performance is also nice, although I wouldn't call
it a "floater". The flaps allow me to fly slow and turn tightly in a
thermal, more so than otherwise.

Landing performance is just breathtaking. Full flaps, full spoilers, and
Vne for that combination (which is a mere 65kts) gives me a 2:1 glide
slope and an incredibly short rollout. I haven't had to land it in a
field yet, but when that day comes, I have no worries about my ability
to squeeze it into a small one.

It's also pretty comfortable, which is important when I'm in it for 5+
hours at a time. The only downside is that the cockpit is kind of small,
so I can't stretch out much, especially on the legs and feet, but this
isn't a big deal. Performance and comfort were the two things that
really bugged me about the otherwise-great 1-26 that a good friend was
letting me fly before, and they're why I didn't buy a 1-26 of my own.

It's a piece of cake to assemble, which means I'm not afraid to fly it
on marginal days. I'm the envy of anyone assembling the club's Open
Cirrus, and of my friend who owns a Ventus, as my wings line up and lock
together like magnets every time. (For those of you who fly powered
aircraft, the idea of assembling your plane before you fly it every day
may sound strange and frightening. It's actually pretty easy to do, at
least if you have the right kind of glider. It only takes me about 30
minutes from start to finish, and most of that is doing fiddly little
bits like hooking up the controls or taping up the gaps on the wings and
tail.)

And of course, it's *mine*, which means that on a good day I can fly it
for as long as I'm wiling and able to keep it airborne, rather than
being called down after an hour or two like in club aircraft. I can also
take it cross country, something which is de facto not allowed in club
gliders. And, although I haven't taken advantage of this yet, I can take
it to other airports and fly it there.

55.4 hours and 35 flights in a year. A lot of those flights were
familiarization flights or just fun flights when conditions didn't
permit soaring, so my average soaring flight time is probably 2+ hours,
with the best one at nearly 6 hours. I haven't kept close track, but
I've made several cross country flights, totaling maybe 500 miles, which
is pretty good considering that I haven't been pushing it hard at all as
I get used to it.

All in all, it's been a great year. All of the good things that I
anticipated in owning an aircraft have come true, and none of the bad
things. It was a great choice, and I'm looking forward to another year
with it.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon