Chapter 4 - Buying the aircraft - part 1

My no.1 and no.3 selections were in Los Angeles and San Diego respectively, so I decided to see them first. The others were near Chicago and in Minnesota which were both bitterly cold and snowing as were the conditions in Maryland. The sixth was in Tennessee.

Piper Society member, David Ind bought a turbo Saratoga in the USA about 2 1/2 years ago and had flown it to Australia with the ferry pilot - Ray Clamback. David was of great help to me and introduced me to Tom McCrea in California, who had helped him through the official paperwork and documentation with FAA, and had carried out inspections and annual service as required for aircraft being exported from USA.

I inspected my no.1 choice first as it was at Hawthorne airport, a couple of miles south of LAX and with an almost parallel runway to Los Angeles runways. This aircraft was being sold privately. When we met at his hangar, owner Ralph asked "What's going on in Australia? Is every Australian here for a convention?" He told me that he had a call earlier that morning from an Australian at Long Beach, who had arranged to inspect the aircraft later that day.

I liked it from the moment I saw it. It was hangared. It sparkled like new which impressed me because I hadn't told the seller I was in LA until late the previous night and he really hadn't had time to clean and polish it. He was head of a local municipality fire department and told me that cleaning, polishing and maintaining equipment was an integral part of life as a fireman and he spent a day in the hangar at least once every 3 weeks cleaning, vacuuming, polishing etc. - it was just a way of life for him. I thought of the way some aircraft sit outside all of their lives and thought that maybe I couldn't buy it as I wouldn't give it quite the loving care to which it was accustomed.

During the inspection, it started to rain heavily and a couple of drops of water landed on the cabin roof, which prompted the owner to yell for the LAME to tell him the roof was leaking on his plane and he 'better do something about it'.

Of course the concrete floors were smooth, painted and sealed, with not a screw or a tool in sight. Ralph was instrument rated and when I commented that he must have flown through rain or left it out overnight when he went to his holiday house in Arizona, he told me he hadn't flow in rain, he had a hangar in Arizona and when he went to other airports he always arranged to hire a hangar while he was there.

Might seem a little far fetched for us here in Australia, but having flown in the USA for 5 weeks in 2008, I had seen the airport facilities and operations there and everything he said was at least believable.