Airplane Camping Cabin Renovation Questions

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Cory S. M. Hinch

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hinch-man
Hello all,

This is my first thread. Big thanks to @GeorgeC for showing me how to post a thread. I am a political consultant and my wife owns a PR firm in Pensacola, Florida. I live walking distance to a very small airport for minis. We also have an international airport in town as well. I know nothing about planes but I hope to have my private pilot license within the next two years. However, my father-in-law owns 3 small planes on his waterfront property (these planes float) nearby and has been flying for many years. I am hoping to connect with him in this hobby while fulfilling my own dreams as well.

I have a passion for nomadic travel ever since I bought my first car (1973 VW Westflia) in 2012. This adventure led me to a dream that I have fulfilled 66% of the way. The dream is to own 3 different modes of transportation for nomadic travel. My VW Bus has bunk beds, my Hunter sailboat can sleep 5, and I have yet to find a plane to complete my fantasy. This leads me to my questions about renovating the interior of an Airplane such as yours. Ideally I would like to have a 5 passenger plane that I can put seats in when traveling with my whole family. When I travel with my wife alone I would like to be able to have a custom fit bed in the cabin. Is this sort of renovation possible? If someone were to do so, would airports allow owners to sleep in their private planes? I was a live aboard on my sailboat for 2 years, which many people found controversial yet some places it was common place. I can imagine airports have a similar perspective in this regard. I can speculate that the smaller airport will be more accommodating. I'm hoping to buy a plane that costs less than 100k and spend more on upgrades. I'd like to be able to seat 6.

*Can you give me any insight into this endeavor?
-Is this sort of renovation possible?
-Would airports allow owners to sleep in their private planes?
-Can I legally make my own renovations?
-What are some places in Florida that I can get custom work like this?
-Will I be able to easily switch out the seats with custom bedding on my own?
-Please offer examples and pictures of any examples you may have.
 
You won’t like it. Unless you’re willing to go outside the airplane for potty call, or keep a potty bucket inside the airplane. It really isn’t like live aboard boating. But have fun trying to make it happen. I can’t think of any airplane smaller than a Pilatus or King Air that would work. At least nothing near 100k. Of course there’s always taking tent and camp gear and camp under the wing.
 
murphey said:
You won’t like it. Unless you’re willing to go outside the airplane for potty call, or keep a potty bucket inside the airplane. It really isn’t like live aboard boating. But have fun trying to make it happen. I can’t think of any airplane smaller than a Pilatus or King Air that would work. At least nothing near 100k. Of course there’s always taking tent and camp gear and camp under the wing.
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I am not above pooping in a bucket for travel. I did it for 2 years. I’m mostly worried about a bed. I am very familiar with portable toilets. To be clear, I never made a private jet a goal.
 
The problem you will find is that small airplanes are a LOT smaller and lighter than even your VW bus, and very limited in the weight they can carry as well as where that weight can be placed. Another issue is that with a standard category (factory built) airplane you are very limited in what kind of changes you're allowed to make. With experimental category (homebuilt) airplanes things are a lot looser, you can pretty much do what you want (within the laws of aerodynamics and physics).

Your Westfalia is at the lower end of adequate for long term travel, not sure about your boat, but the kind of usage you describe is at the upper end of small airplane size. If you're wealthy there are lots of options even discounting jets (I've seen PBY Catalinas, DC-3s, even a Sikorsky S-55 helicopter (edit, I see Bell20 beat me to that one) converted as flying motorhomes. Other than that, perhaps a De Havilland Beaver? Or an Antonov AN-2. Come to think of it, an AN-2 is probably the perfect flying motorhome to complement a Westy.

But seriously, the most realistic thing is tent camping, which only requires a reasonable sized plane, or if you want to go to lightweight backpacking gear, you can join the bush plane crowd for backcountry fly camping.
 
I was thinking I could put around 20-30k into renovating. I don’t know what wealthy is in terms of aircraft. I found the Cherokee 6 really appealing. I mean if I was adamant about renovating what would it take? Roughly Ball park for me with something like a Cherokee 6 as a template.
 
Cory S. M. Hinch said:
What do you mean when you talk about approval cost?
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Any alterations to a FAA type certicated aircraft require installation approval per the FAA rules. For items considered a minor alteration any FAA A&P mechanic can sign off those installations. However, if the installation falls under a major alteration then the drawings and changes will require special approvals that can be very costly. For example, you could very easily surpass the total value of your aircraft to install your camper mods depending how involved they are.
 
First of all, if you've got an "in" with someone who has seaplanes, OMG cultivate that relationship!!

I've camped at a lot of airports around the country. Not in the cabin, but in a tent -- under the wing mostly. It's easy and economical, requires no modifications to the airplane. Few (small) airplanes are roomy enough for more than one person to sleep inside, but many are roomy enough for a tent and gear. All you've gotta do is find an out-of-the-way grassy spot at the airport. Stay away from cities and regional hubs -- all pavement, no grassy spots! -- and there are a lot of options, including grass strips and airport in parks.

There are even some airports that have a designated camping area. Some places have a really nice one, with fire pits and restrooms or water or electricity. Arcadia, FL, for instance (second picture, below). Word of mouth is the best way to find out about such places. Check out the RAF (Recreational Aviation Foundation, https://theraf.org) who have catalogs of awesome places. Some have short runways, or grass runways. Too huge of a plane and you might not be able to land there.

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Fun topic to think about. You could easily convert a larger single or twin to be more of a motor home with little kitchen and beds along with seats. That could be fun. Power with airports might be the challenge since they aren’t thinking RV connection.
 
Another thing to consider is that the vast majority of airports (there are exceptions) aren't particularly wonderful senic spots... not a destination that you'd want to camp at, unless you get into the backcountry, or are flying a seaplane to some remote beach somewhere... or you can manage ground transportation to your final destination.

Not to dissuade you, though... I've stretched my sleeping bag under the wing numerous times, both enroute and at my destination... and I've carried backpacking gear to go hiking from a destination airport near a trailhead.
 
I know in a 206 you can take the back seats out and put a mattress in and sleep in it pretty comfortably. You could get really fancy and get some sort of custom-fit mattress that would work with the space really well and be quite comfortable.

Or you could save an S-load of money and just buy a tent and some camping gear, which makes waaaaay more sense from a usability point of view.
 
The problem I see here is who gets the inside and who gets the outside. If the person away from the door needs to potty in the middle of the night, you're both getting up.

I'm in favor of the tent + camping gear too. Airplanes are small inside and get narrow in the back. It's probably like sleeping two people in a double bed...you can do it, but it isn't going to be fun. If you're both slender, it can work.
 
#AA5Bman your suggestion is more like what I was thinking I just don’t understand why I might need to get a FAA major modification for a temporary fix sure that I literally just placed in the cabin. I was thinking a custom mattress with a wood frame that could easily be taken apart simply placed in there but I don’t know of any regulations concerning that specifically. For less than two grand I could make a custom mattress from a guy that makes the same sort of thing for boats here in town. Being able to take the seats out and leave them in a hangar sounds sensible to me. 206 what?
 
If the aircraft's type certificate allows the seats to be removed and that area used for cargo, then yoiu can put anything in there you want, subject to the aircraft's weight and balance limitations (which are much more restrictive than a car's). But you can't attach it to the plane, then it becomes a modification that would have to be approved.

There's a similar discussion right now over on the Homebuilt Airplanes forum. Some discussion about sleeping arrangements in a Bearhawk (which is large as homebuilts go). On a homebuilt, you can change anything you want (legally, that is, but you better know what you're doing).

bflynn said:
The problem I see here is who gets the inside and who gets the outside. If the person away from the door needs to potty in the middle of the night, you're both getting up.
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That's how it is with the bunk over the cab in our Tiger motorhome, which is not much larger than Cory's hippie bus. I get to sleep on the outside because I get up more often than my wife.

But if you sleep in the plane there's not much room for anything else, cooking and hanging out will be outside, so you still need camping gear, just not the tent.

Here's one about a woman (Skychick) camping and sleeping in her plane on a windy night:

 
We've all dreamt about it. I always thought a PBY would be the coolest.
 
Gonna be tough to pull of with a 100k budget in this market. You might be able to find a nearly run out Cherokee Six for under 100k. But the overhaul is gonna cost 40k. Paint 14k, interior 5k, avionics...if you go full glass and gfc 500 autopilot, 60-75k. And if you do all that and spend 220k to fix it up, you might be able to sell it for 160.

Acquisition cost is probably the least expensive long term when you start talking about refurbishing. And that's if you start with a good airframe and no squawks. Many a thread has been started about things that were found in the first annual. Some planes were totaled because of things that were missed in a pre-buy. Even then, things pop up during annual. My dad's Cherokee Six had a chunk of aluminum break off a boss on the accessory case. 8k annual. Factor in hangar/tiedowns and insurance...Airplane ownership is not for the faint of heart. Unless you go experimental, you just can't do things like you would on a car or boat.
 
Cory S. M. Hinch said:
I just don’t understand why I might need to get a FAA major modification for a temporary fix sure that I literally just placed in the cabin.
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As long as you don't "permanently" attach your contraption to any aircraft structure no FAA issues as its all considered loose equipment or cargo.
Cory S. M. Hinch said:
Being able to take the seats out and leave them in a hangar sounds sensible to me.
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Now removing seats and leaving them in the hangar requires a new empty weight and equipment list correction which needs an A&P to sign off unless you get a LOA from your local FSDO to perform the calculation and logbook entry.
 
Bell206 said:
As long as you don't "permanently" attach your contraption to any aircraft structure no FAA issues as its all considered loose equipment or cargo.

Now removing seats and leaving them in the hangar requires a new empty weight and equipment list correction which needs an A&P to sign off unless you get a LOA from your local FSDO to perform the calculation and logbook entry.
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would I need to get the mechanic or a letter every time I switched them out?
 
A PA32 would require very little to make it work. Take seats out. Some plywood to get from spar to baggage area and an air mattress. But you're not taking family with for that.

Talk to the father in law about airplane ownership and budget. There's a lot of nuances. It's not a car or boat. Weight and balance, regulations...
 
I was budgeting 100 for the base price of the plane. I originally hoped to put 30-40 k in it after that over a 3 year period. My wife is an attorney and so we aren’t really struggling financially. However we aren’t multi millionaires either.
 
Cory S. M. Hinch said:
would I need to get the mechanic or a letter every time I switched them out?
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If you didn't get the LOA you would need a mechanic to update/sign-off the change to the empty weight each time. If you got an LOA you would be making these corrections/logbook entries each time.
 
"Weight and Balance" is a persnickety thing about airplanes. The weight of an entire airplane (including the seats, and you, and your cargo, etc.) all has to fit inside a safe envelope of not only overall gross weight but also where the Center of Gravity (CG) is located. If there's too much weight forward, or too much weight aft, you can crash and die. If there's too much weight in total, you can crash and die.

Because of the extraordinary consequences of getting this wrong (y'know, crashing and dying), there are regulations that require specific paperwork related to the location and weight of everything in the aircraft when it's "empty", so that you (the pilot) can compute how much passengers and cargo you can bring aboard and where that weight can safely go. Remove some seats? Install a bed? You've just changed both the aircraft's empty weight and the location of its CG.
So yeah... it's nuanced.
 
L-5... no renovation required. You’re going to need three...

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I suggest a cot tent. Much easier.

Is your wife on board with spending her money? If so, does she have any like minded friends?
 
Cory S. M. Hinch said:
#AA5Bman your suggestion is more like what I was thinking I just don’t understand why I might need to get a FAA major modification for a temporary fix sure that I literally just placed in the cabin. I was thinking a custom mattress with a wood frame that could easily be taken apart simply placed in there but I don’t know of any regulations concerning that specifically. For less than two grand I could make a custom mattress from a guy that makes the same sort of thing for boats here in town. Being able to take the seats out and leave them in a hangar sounds sensible to me. 206 what?
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Cessna 206. But they’re expensive.

You wouldn’t need any sort of approval for a custom fit mattress or anything else that isn’t permanently attached (and I think you could get away with some modifications being “minor” alterations, but you’re pushing it).

I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree. With the right plane you can haul waaaay more gear and have about as elaborate and comfortable a camping setup as you want, but if you must sleep inside, it’s going to marginal at best. I’ve slept in the back of a 182 (awful), and considered sleeping in the back of a 206, which would be pretty comfy for one, tight for two, and impossible for anything more than that.

On other thought - none of these planes sit particularly level. Fortunately you’d be sleeping feet-down not head-down, but there would be no way to level them left to right or front to back, which I personally find irritating when it comes to tents or our truck camper.
 
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