Off-putting things in aircraft ads.

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Ashara Keliyn

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Ashara
Other than the usual grainy pictures, vague descriptions and "call for price" ads, what are some of the other off-putting things one encounters while browsing the listings?

Misspellings: "hanger" is something that helps you to suspend your coats in the closet. "Duel" is how we solved disputes mano-a-mano (back when mano were mano). "Manuel" is my 3rd cousin on dad's side.

Pictures: I don't care how buff your brother is or how hot your wife is and how good they look standing next to your Piper (there are other platforms for that). A photo of your cargo area with bunch of random junk inside. A photo where the aircraft occupies .01% of the pixels ( I know, Oregon's south coast is beautiful).

Description: so you know so little about your aircraft that you had to copy and paste the most generic description from Wikipedia about "a family of single engine aircraft manufacture by ...."?

What are some of yours?
 
I’ve seen a lot of multi engines leave hours off of one engine but the other is low time. Like “this is the one you should care about!”


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Flight Rules: BTH or Both. Really, there are aircraft you can only fly IFR?

No pictures of the panel. No description of the avionics.

You said "call for price", but its not just annoying. If you don't put a price, I never see that ad because I search with a minimum price to get rid of projects. "Call for price" equates to 0 by the search engine.

Price that doesn't accurately account for condition. Specifically, if your engine is close to TBO, I need the price to reflect the need for me to spend multiple AMUs in the next few years. Similar, inaccurate ratings of paint and interior. Cracked plastic is not an 8. Bare metal outside is not a 10.

Most of these, I stop looking at the ad. So if the wife is demanding you sell, here's your list on how not to.
 
Ashara Keliyn said:
Other than the usual grainy pictures, vague descriptions and "call for price" ads, what are some of the other off-putting things one encounters while browsing the listings?

Misspellings: "hanger" is something that helps you to suspend your coats in the closet. "Duel" is how we solved disputes mano-a-mano (back when mano were mano). "Manuel" is my 3rd cousin on dad's side.

Pictures: I don't care how buff your brother is or how hot your wife is and how good they look standing next to your Piper (there are other platforms for that). A photo of your cargo area with bunch of random junk inside. A photo where the aircraft occupies .01% of the pixels ( I know, Oregon's south coast is beautiful).

Description: so you know so little about your aircraft that you had to copy and paste the most generic description from Wikipedia about "a family of single engine aircraft manufacture by ...."?

What are some of yours?
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I had a thread on this a while back discussing "red flags" in posting.

most notable:
- No photos/bad photos. If you can't be bothered to snap a couple decent photos of the plane then you're not a serious seller IMHO. That's just the basics.
- Prices that are divorced from reality.
- Snarky remarks that indicate the person would be a pain to deal with in a transaction.
- Horrendous grammar. You don't have to write like Shakespeare, but it's alarming when there are spelling errors every few words. It's hard to take someone seriously when they can't even use a built in spell-check that comes integrated in every phone, browser and word processing utility. It makes you wonder what other attention to detail they're lacking.
 
Those are kinda given. I meant more personal, possibly even idiosyncratic pet peeves. For example whenever I see somebody is standing next to the aircraft in the ad picture, that's automatically a pass. I know it's not rational and that I might be missing out on great deal, but....
 
a large type number followed by "invested" when describing the cash-deleting bonfire with wings.

In seriousness, though, I've thought about making some sort of "minimum viable aircraft ad" checklist for the idiots out there with no mirror neurons to leverage.

Useful load or empty weight almost never feature in all but the best ads -- and I have no idea why. It's super important and super individual to every airplane out there.
 
Not capitalizing the right letters. E.g. instead of Piper, they write piper. Or instead of Garmin, they write garmin. Or not capitalizing after a full stop. I can forgive spelling errors, I make plenty myself (luckily everything is being spell checked in real time nowadays lol), but capitalizing properly isn't all that difficult.
 
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schmookeeg said:
Useful load or empty weight almost never feature in all but the best ads -- and I have no idea why. It's super important and super individual to every airplane out there.
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That there. You don't want to travel a long distance to see it only to discover that the W&B is either nonsense, or the airplane is simply way too heavy with some fancy interior and a radio stack full of 1970s stuff and a coat of paint over the old paint.

I once went with some guys that wanted to buy a Taylorcraft. The weight and balance showed that it had a useful load of 120 pounds. Nonsense. But that wasn't the show-stopper. It was obviously way of, or there was a couple of inches of concrete in the belly. The thing that killed the deal was a big crack in the wooden rear spar of one wing. I looked back through the logs and sure enough, it had been blown over on its back in a windstorm. Putting all the load on the wingtips overstresses the spars and they can crack at the strut attach points. They crack from the top down so that flight loads close the crack. For a while anyway. Then it fails.
 
$X0,000 recently spent (um. those turned out to be repairs or wear items)
A&P-owner maintained (could be a positive but I'm sure that will come to light..)
Selling for friend (or broker-represented) ie neither of these will have solid, first hand knowledge)
 
For me it's really the pictures. The number of ads I see with awful pictures is just amazing. I mean, you're selling a multi-tens to multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars vehicle here, and you can't remove your trash before taking pictures? Headsets hanging on the yokes, cords tangled all around, water bottle laying on the floor, etc. Come on now.
 
"I don't really need to sell this aircraft but ... "

Which begs the question, "then why did you put it out for sale on three different aircraft for sale sites? :dunno:
 
schmookeeg said:
Useful load or empty weight almost never feature in all but the best ads -- and I have no idea why. It's super important and super individual to every airplane out there.
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This.I’ve been looking at Cessna 140’s a long time and almost none of the adds will state these.It’s really important to me on a peewee airplane
 
Not posting recent pictures. I don’t want to see what your plane looked like coming out of the paint shop 20 years ago. I want to see what it looks like today.
 
Ashara Keliyn said:
Misspellings: "hanger" is something that helps you to suspend your coats in the closet. "Duel" is how we solved disputes mano-a-mano (back when mano were mano). "Manuel" is my 3rd cousin on dad's side.

What are some of yours?
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Misunderstanding "mano a mano" to mean "man to man" instead of "hand to hand" (though that doesn't often come up in airplane ads).
 
nit picky I know, but it bugs me when they write "no corrosion"... and the right there in the picture I see surface rust on the yoke.
or maybe worse, no damage but you can see minor damage or repair....
I know what they mean.... it's just not honest though.
 
"Only flown by a little old lady on perfect Sunday mornings ..."
 
Great list of gripes, many of which I share. If I may add one more, how about the misuse of the term pedigree when the seller really means provenance (or more down-to-earthily, ownership history)? I see pedigree pop up from time to time, almost always in ads placed by brokers. I assume they're trying to plaster a bit more lipstick on the pig they're peddling, but in misusing pedigree in such a manner they manage to come across as being both pretentious and foolish. OTOH, I've not seen any of these ads corrected, so I guess either no one cares, or no one knows what pedigree actually means.
 
Jim_R said:
Misunderstanding "mano a mano" to mean "man to man" instead of "hand to hand" (though that doesn't often come up in airplane ads).
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Not getting tongue in cheek humor (although that also does not come up in ads too often)
 
Bob Noel said:
sellers who think a top overhaul zeros the engine hours.
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Yes! I've seen a lot more of this over the last year.
They'll put "400 since overhaul" and then in the notes they'll say "400 since IRAN" or "STOH".
SMOH/SFRM? Maybe thousands, who knows.
 
I have seen ads without any listing of avionics.
 
Ads that play up a 3LMB (three light marker beacon) as being noteworthy. “Full IFR” - KX-170, ARC com, ADF and a single CDI, and maybe a DME.
Out-of-focus photos, headsets, cables for accessories, iPads or charts not removed for photos, dimly lit pics taken inside a closed hangar.
Not stating what year the last overhaul was done.
 
RussR said:
For me it's really the pictures. The number of ads I see with awful pictures is just amazing. I mean, you're selling a multi-tens to multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars vehicle here, and you can't remove your trash before taking pictures? Headsets hanging on the yokes, cords tangled all around, water bottle laying on the floor, etc. Come on now.
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Add blurred pictures.
 
Coleslaw in the pictures can be off-putting. It can speak volumes about the seller.
 
Putting in a TailBeacon for ADSB out in a +$200K airplane to go along with the best of the 1980's avionics and almost timed out engine.
 
The word “fresh” describing the annual or any maintenance is especially off putting to me.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
I had a thread on this a while back discussing "red flags" in posting.

most notable:
- No photos/bad photos. If you can't be bothered to snap a couple decent photos of the plane then you're not a serious seller IMHO. That's just the basics.
- Prices that are divorced from reality.
- Snarky remarks that indicate the person would be a pain to deal with in a transaction.
- Horrendous grammar. You don't have to write like Shakespeare, but it's alarming when there are spelling errors every few words. It's hard to take someone seriously when they can't even use a built in spell-check that comes integrated in every phone, browser and word processing utility. It makes you wonder what other attention to detail they're lacking.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much my list. To all the curmudgeons who put "...don't ask if its still available...." in their ads, don't worry!
 
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