Chapter 5 - Buying an aircraft - Part 2

The next day I drove to San Diego to inspect Saratoga choice no.3. It was being sold by the Piper Dealer who also claimed to be the official Piper parts and Service organisation for that part of the country.

When I phoned him from LA to make the appointment, he wanted to know what was happening in Australia as he had sold a Mirage to an Australian a week earlier and had an Australian in his office who had just signed to buy a Cessna. I told him about the lower prices in USA and the strength of the Australian $, and he told me that was what the other Australians had told him.

We walked through the hangar which had four aircraft, but there was so much room that I could have driven to each one. There was one Cessna, a Mirage and a Matrix and the Saratoga. Again, an immaculate painted & sealed concrete floor.

Whilst neat and tidy and shiny from the outside, the brown interior of the Saratoga was drab and almost depressing - to me. Obviously the first owner had found it attractive. It had about the same total hours but 300 hours less to run on the engine. It was also cheaper than the no.1 choice.

The no.1 choice had additional avionics with traffic avoidance, stormscope, GMX 200 moving map, full set of co-pilot IFR instruments, speed brakes plus more. Some of these I didn't need, but all-in-all no.1 turned out to be just that. The aircraft had 1040 hours total time but had a major engine overhaul just 299 hours earlier, which left 1700 before the next major engine overhaul. Having had a chat with Tom McCrea, I decided to make an offer on no.1 - call sign N6PL.

The next day we met at Saratoga N6PL's hangar and after another inspection, this time with Tom present, we agreed on a small price reduction and the sale was agreed subject to a flight, the normal US mechanical and structural inspection checks which seem to be standard in USA. A much better system than we have here.

We took off parallel to LAX runways with the big jets flying out beside us. We took as short flight along the coast with me having a play with the controls but totally overwhelmed by the avionics.

Click on photo to enlarge