TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
I promised to post the story and some pictures, so here you go!
For those of you that just want the pictures (click the link, then the first picture, then click “Slideshow” at the top to see the pictures full screen with descriptive captions):
https://plus.google.com/photos/104864247395730348780/albums/6118770805687362289
I posted a few months ago that I was looking for a 182, R182, or TR182, and after a long search, I found a low time (2800 hours TTAF, 765 TT SFRM engine) 1980 TR182 that’s lived most of its life in the dry desert of Scottsdale, AZ.
When I first found the airplane online, I’d already missed out on several other better equipped straight leg 182s by a hair—literally, another buyer who had called first by 15 or 20 minutes. So, I’d been hyper vigilant about browsing online sites, even using browser tools that will monitor pages in the background and automatically “ding” as soon as they see a change. Using that method, I was first caller to a broker representing a seller at Deer Valley airport north of the Phoenix area, who was selling his 18-year-owned TR182 after upgrading to a T210N. John Efinger (Cessna Guru, IA, www.cessnarigging.com, and friend) had been contacted well before this, and had served as my “search advisor”, looking at a great many planes and pictures.
A little back and forth conversation turned into making a quick weekend trip to Phoenix to see the plane in person, then secured first right of refusal with a deposit. On that first weekend look-see and test flight, I had the seller’s mechanic have the airplane reasonably opened up (cowl off, some inspection panels opened), and John had me come by his hangar before the trip, to show me “what to look for.” I took a massively insane amount of pictures (~380), and it passed the litmus test. Around the 7th of February, we booked a one way ticket for me and John to head out to Phoenix/Deer Valley on Saturday the 14th to do the real pre-buy, with the expectation that we’d fly it home on Monday the 16th if all went well.
That’s where the story gets interesting… up until this point, everybody forgot (including the escrow and finance companies) that the FAA, and the escrow, and the bank, would all be closed on Monday the 16th for Presidents’ Day. We “figured it out” on the day before our departure, so I had to ask John if he’d be willing to hang out in Arizona an extra day, and help me fly it back on Tuesday. We also had to coordinate that with Gil, my CFII and TR182/R182 experienced pilot, who was planning to fly one-way to Phoenix early Monday (now Tuesday) to satisfy the insurance requirement’s 3 hours dual before solo.
Off to Phoenix we went, with an oh-dark-thirty departure. I’d scheduled a 4:15am shuttle from my house to the airport, and had told John not to be late, the earlier the better, as we were on a shared shuttle van ride, and I didn’t want to delay the other passengers. “The earlier the better” meant ~ 4:00am to me, but not later than 4:15am. I had my alarm set for a 3:45am wakeup call. “The earlier the better” to John meant “I’ll get up at 2am and head on over there.” My phone was on “do not disturb”, so I didn’t hear him calling me, and my doorbell didn’t work, so poor John is going down the street, knocking on doors, checking street signs and hoping he doesn’t wake up the wrong house. Anyway, once I woke up at 3:45, and looked at my cell phone, I could see John had been trying to call, and we got it all straightened out, and John didn’t get shot by any of my neighbors. They’re nice folks, my neighbors. ;-)
John hadn’t flown commercial in a long time, so I guided him through the Security Theater at DFW and we got settled into First Class seats on US Airways for a 6:00am flight to PHX. Two and half hours later, we arrived, and took a cab to my brother’s place in Scottsdale. He was gone on a hiking trip, and had offered the use of their vehicle and home while they were away! The cabby nearly got us all killed on the way there, when he followed the “magenta voice of death” from his GPS, and decided that “exit right in two miles” meant “get in the right lane now”… except that the “right lane” he selected was the freeway shoulder, not a lane. It took some exciting and escalating voices from the back seat for John and I to communicate to the driver that he was not in a freeway lane, and that we’d appreciate that he get back in the lane before he encounter the semi-truck tire retreads that were rapidly approaching the vehicle at 70mph! We dropped our stuff at my brother’s place, then we headed over to KDVT safely in our own vehicle, where we met the broker’s rep for breakfast at the airport café before heading over to the hangar.
The seller was not there, as he was in the process of returning from a European business trip, but the broker’s rep had hangar access for us, and John got started doing his thing. He stuck the boroscope in the engine and said “Holy *”, which made me nervous. He kept making various utterances that filled me with dread. He finally asked “how many hours does this engine have, again?!” I told him “765 since factory reman.” He said “wow, this is by far the cleanest engine I’ve ever seen. There’s no corrosion at all inside here. Cross hatching on the cylinder walls looks like a 100 hour engine!!” Similar utterances were made after looking at the inside of the wings and fuselage—the dry climate was good for corrosion resistance apparently!
We did find a few things that gave us pause or concern… intake gaskets squished and leaking, engine mounts sagging enough that the prop spinner was about a half inch below the cowl, leading to chafing of oil return / oil filler tubes / exhaust crossover tubes. Enough items that we were able to create a laundry list of “first annual” items in the $6K range on what we’d deem “airworthiness items”, the most serious of which was the engine mounts and original flexible fuel line connections, where the rubber lines were getting dry and cracked (but not leaking -- yet).
We retired at the end of the day back to my brother’s place and enjoyed the sunset and the pool. We counted no less than 15 hot air balloons in the air the next morning at sunrise… beautiful!
I won’t say anything here about the Seller’s tactics… he may come around here and read this… but we weren’t able to negotiate any reduction in price due to the discrepancies we found. This “disappointed” both John and I, but after discussion, we felt the airframe and engine were still a sound investment, and we proceeded with the deal. This included going to a parts store, obtaining the intake gaskets, and being ready to do the field repairs.
Sunday evening we explored Cave Creek, had dinner with my brother and his girl, who’d returned from their trip, and walked around a motorcycle ralley in town, looking for (but not quite finding) a specific engine John wanted to get pictures of, since he has one in a box that needs to be reassembled.
And, about this time, it also became apparent that we wouldn’t be going home Tuesday… the weather in the Dallas area was bad—ice, IMC, etc. Forecast was for improvement in the afternoon Tuesday, but we didn’t want to be flying night IMC over the mountains in a new-to-us-all airplane, so we pushed Gil’s ticket to Wednesday morning, and John and I had Monday off, and planned to return Tuesday to do the required “flight home” repairs and a post-maintenance test flight with the owner.
Monday was a day off. Being a federal holiday, National Park Service sites were open and free of the usual admission, so we drove north towards Sedona, stopping at three national parks along the way: Montezuma’s Castle (with cliff dwellings), Beaver Creek Well (from which water bubbles at a very steady rate year round from deep underground springs, and forms the headwaters for picturesque Beaver Creek), and V-Bar-V ranch, a historic cattle ranch with Hopi Indian petroglyphs on the property, which was turned over to the National Park Service by the family that owned the ranch.
Enroute to the Well from the Castle, I looked left and saw an airplane at what we thought was an airport up on the hill. We did a quick turn around, asking some locals how to get to it, and found ourselves at a remote airpark community in Rimrock, AZ. Google Earth view of airpark
At the entrance was a foreclosed home for sale by auction… and yes, we bid on it. And no, we didn’t get it. Beautiful place, awesome views of the mountains down runway 23.
After visiting the Well and Petroglyphs sites, we headed up Hwy 179’s Red Rock Scenic Byway to Sedona, bought some jewelry for our brides, visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross (what a view!), and of course Sedona Airport, before having dinner at an Italian restaurant in town and then a post-sundown return to Scottsdale.
Tuesday was back to the airport. Get the intake gaskets installed, a test flight with the owner, complete closing, etc… except nobody told us before that afternoon that the FAA closes their “window” for the escrow agents at 3:30pm CT. We first heard about it with “30 minutes to close” and John was just saddling up for the test flight. So, we did the test flight and arranged for Escrow to close first thing (8:30am) Wednesday. We also started getting photos via text from Gil, still back in Dallas, showing that the promised afternoon clearing didn’t happen, and it re-affirmed our decision to wait until Wednesday for the flight home.
Wednesday, we were going to take my brother’s girls’ car to the PHX airport, pickup Gil, then head to KDVT and depart, leaving the car for my brother and his girl to retrieve later, but we found the car had a flat tire! We fixed that as quickly as we could and made our way to PHX, picked up Gil (about 15 minutes later than planned), and headed to KDVT. About an hour and a half later we were loaded, fueled, briefed on local area procedures, pleasantries and goodbyes exchanged with the owner, and holding short for departure.
We departed about a quarter after 10am local, and immediately turned south to use what’s known as the “East / West Route”, even though it runs north/south, to get south of PHX through the class B. It’s called the “East/West Route” because as you approach PHX proper you’re told to remain East or West of the center of the airport, and you head north or south over the departure ends of the East/West runways.
Clear of the Class B to the south, we headed towards Tuscon, saw the Dothan aircraft graveyard, and onwards towards El Paso, skirting the border with Mexico along the V16-66 route, which kept us clear of all terrain at just 9500’. Yes, this is a turbo and we could have gone higher, but the seller didn’t include the O2 masks, so we didn’t fill the tanks. The aerostat on a cable was up that day—wow, you’d hate to hit that thing or its cable.
A NOTAM check that morning had caught that E11, our originally planned fuel stop with 100LL for a miserly $3.31/gallon, was out of fuel due to the demand such a great price created. So we stopped at Hurd Memorial (E01) instead, paying $4.75 to a clueless line guy that dragged the fuel hose all over the leading edge of the wings and didn’t support the hose on his shoulder, and fueled one side to the top despite our asking for “partial load, to the tabs each side”. The black scuff marks are still there, I’m hoping they’ll buff out. I was in the bathroom when he did this, or I’d have had words! Didn’t see it when it occurred.
Departing E01, after gear up, we lost the alternator—low volts light illuminated, ammeter showing a discharge. We ran the checklist and it came back online, we continued. I think the combined load of the lights we had on, all the radios, gear motor was enough to pop the field circuit on the solid state ACU. The breakers themselves didn’t pop. We’ll monitor this—I’ve already ordered AlphaBeam LED lights for the landing/taxi lights, and the reduced current draw from those should help.
Safely home at 5:45pm CT, we tucked her in a hangar, quickly took a “we’re home” picture, and went our separate ways!
And that’s the story! I was looking for hangar space at Meacham (KFTW); that’d be convenient, is really close to my home, has long runways, a nice terminal for me to pick up Angel Flight passengers (I’m the NE Texas Wing Leader for Angel Flight South Central). Long waiting list there. Ended up getting a hangar over at Hicks (T67) yesterday, and flew the plane (first solo in it) there last night. I’m sharing a big hangar with one guy, an 80 year old nice gentleman that just finished building a Lancair IV-P. Funny story: John knows the guy, and when I sent the picture of his “hangar available” sign to my wife, it turns out SHE knows the guy and his wife, too! And, it’s about 6 hangars down from John’s place, so future maintenance will be easy peasy.
I guess it was meant to be!
Picture: John, being a goofball and photo-bombing my selfie.
For those of you that just want the pictures (click the link, then the first picture, then click “Slideshow” at the top to see the pictures full screen with descriptive captions):
https://plus.google.com/photos/104864247395730348780/albums/6118770805687362289
I posted a few months ago that I was looking for a 182, R182, or TR182, and after a long search, I found a low time (2800 hours TTAF, 765 TT SFRM engine) 1980 TR182 that’s lived most of its life in the dry desert of Scottsdale, AZ.
When I first found the airplane online, I’d already missed out on several other better equipped straight leg 182s by a hair—literally, another buyer who had called first by 15 or 20 minutes. So, I’d been hyper vigilant about browsing online sites, even using browser tools that will monitor pages in the background and automatically “ding” as soon as they see a change. Using that method, I was first caller to a broker representing a seller at Deer Valley airport north of the Phoenix area, who was selling his 18-year-owned TR182 after upgrading to a T210N. John Efinger (Cessna Guru, IA, www.cessnarigging.com, and friend) had been contacted well before this, and had served as my “search advisor”, looking at a great many planes and pictures.
A little back and forth conversation turned into making a quick weekend trip to Phoenix to see the plane in person, then secured first right of refusal with a deposit. On that first weekend look-see and test flight, I had the seller’s mechanic have the airplane reasonably opened up (cowl off, some inspection panels opened), and John had me come by his hangar before the trip, to show me “what to look for.” I took a massively insane amount of pictures (~380), and it passed the litmus test. Around the 7th of February, we booked a one way ticket for me and John to head out to Phoenix/Deer Valley on Saturday the 14th to do the real pre-buy, with the expectation that we’d fly it home on Monday the 16th if all went well.
That’s where the story gets interesting… up until this point, everybody forgot (including the escrow and finance companies) that the FAA, and the escrow, and the bank, would all be closed on Monday the 16th for Presidents’ Day. We “figured it out” on the day before our departure, so I had to ask John if he’d be willing to hang out in Arizona an extra day, and help me fly it back on Tuesday. We also had to coordinate that with Gil, my CFII and TR182/R182 experienced pilot, who was planning to fly one-way to Phoenix early Monday (now Tuesday) to satisfy the insurance requirement’s 3 hours dual before solo.
Off to Phoenix we went, with an oh-dark-thirty departure. I’d scheduled a 4:15am shuttle from my house to the airport, and had told John not to be late, the earlier the better, as we were on a shared shuttle van ride, and I didn’t want to delay the other passengers. “The earlier the better” meant ~ 4:00am to me, but not later than 4:15am. I had my alarm set for a 3:45am wakeup call. “The earlier the better” to John meant “I’ll get up at 2am and head on over there.” My phone was on “do not disturb”, so I didn’t hear him calling me, and my doorbell didn’t work, so poor John is going down the street, knocking on doors, checking street signs and hoping he doesn’t wake up the wrong house. Anyway, once I woke up at 3:45, and looked at my cell phone, I could see John had been trying to call, and we got it all straightened out, and John didn’t get shot by any of my neighbors. They’re nice folks, my neighbors. ;-)
John hadn’t flown commercial in a long time, so I guided him through the Security Theater at DFW and we got settled into First Class seats on US Airways for a 6:00am flight to PHX. Two and half hours later, we arrived, and took a cab to my brother’s place in Scottsdale. He was gone on a hiking trip, and had offered the use of their vehicle and home while they were away! The cabby nearly got us all killed on the way there, when he followed the “magenta voice of death” from his GPS, and decided that “exit right in two miles” meant “get in the right lane now”… except that the “right lane” he selected was the freeway shoulder, not a lane. It took some exciting and escalating voices from the back seat for John and I to communicate to the driver that he was not in a freeway lane, and that we’d appreciate that he get back in the lane before he encounter the semi-truck tire retreads that were rapidly approaching the vehicle at 70mph! We dropped our stuff at my brother’s place, then we headed over to KDVT safely in our own vehicle, where we met the broker’s rep for breakfast at the airport café before heading over to the hangar.
The seller was not there, as he was in the process of returning from a European business trip, but the broker’s rep had hangar access for us, and John got started doing his thing. He stuck the boroscope in the engine and said “Holy *”, which made me nervous. He kept making various utterances that filled me with dread. He finally asked “how many hours does this engine have, again?!” I told him “765 since factory reman.” He said “wow, this is by far the cleanest engine I’ve ever seen. There’s no corrosion at all inside here. Cross hatching on the cylinder walls looks like a 100 hour engine!!” Similar utterances were made after looking at the inside of the wings and fuselage—the dry climate was good for corrosion resistance apparently!
We did find a few things that gave us pause or concern… intake gaskets squished and leaking, engine mounts sagging enough that the prop spinner was about a half inch below the cowl, leading to chafing of oil return / oil filler tubes / exhaust crossover tubes. Enough items that we were able to create a laundry list of “first annual” items in the $6K range on what we’d deem “airworthiness items”, the most serious of which was the engine mounts and original flexible fuel line connections, where the rubber lines were getting dry and cracked (but not leaking -- yet).
We retired at the end of the day back to my brother’s place and enjoyed the sunset and the pool. We counted no less than 15 hot air balloons in the air the next morning at sunrise… beautiful!
I won’t say anything here about the Seller’s tactics… he may come around here and read this… but we weren’t able to negotiate any reduction in price due to the discrepancies we found. This “disappointed” both John and I, but after discussion, we felt the airframe and engine were still a sound investment, and we proceeded with the deal. This included going to a parts store, obtaining the intake gaskets, and being ready to do the field repairs.
Sunday evening we explored Cave Creek, had dinner with my brother and his girl, who’d returned from their trip, and walked around a motorcycle ralley in town, looking for (but not quite finding) a specific engine John wanted to get pictures of, since he has one in a box that needs to be reassembled.
And, about this time, it also became apparent that we wouldn’t be going home Tuesday… the weather in the Dallas area was bad—ice, IMC, etc. Forecast was for improvement in the afternoon Tuesday, but we didn’t want to be flying night IMC over the mountains in a new-to-us-all airplane, so we pushed Gil’s ticket to Wednesday morning, and John and I had Monday off, and planned to return Tuesday to do the required “flight home” repairs and a post-maintenance test flight with the owner.
Monday was a day off. Being a federal holiday, National Park Service sites were open and free of the usual admission, so we drove north towards Sedona, stopping at three national parks along the way: Montezuma’s Castle (with cliff dwellings), Beaver Creek Well (from which water bubbles at a very steady rate year round from deep underground springs, and forms the headwaters for picturesque Beaver Creek), and V-Bar-V ranch, a historic cattle ranch with Hopi Indian petroglyphs on the property, which was turned over to the National Park Service by the family that owned the ranch.
Enroute to the Well from the Castle, I looked left and saw an airplane at what we thought was an airport up on the hill. We did a quick turn around, asking some locals how to get to it, and found ourselves at a remote airpark community in Rimrock, AZ. Google Earth view of airpark
At the entrance was a foreclosed home for sale by auction… and yes, we bid on it. And no, we didn’t get it. Beautiful place, awesome views of the mountains down runway 23.
After visiting the Well and Petroglyphs sites, we headed up Hwy 179’s Red Rock Scenic Byway to Sedona, bought some jewelry for our brides, visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross (what a view!), and of course Sedona Airport, before having dinner at an Italian restaurant in town and then a post-sundown return to Scottsdale.
Tuesday was back to the airport. Get the intake gaskets installed, a test flight with the owner, complete closing, etc… except nobody told us before that afternoon that the FAA closes their “window” for the escrow agents at 3:30pm CT. We first heard about it with “30 minutes to close” and John was just saddling up for the test flight. So, we did the test flight and arranged for Escrow to close first thing (8:30am) Wednesday. We also started getting photos via text from Gil, still back in Dallas, showing that the promised afternoon clearing didn’t happen, and it re-affirmed our decision to wait until Wednesday for the flight home.
Wednesday, we were going to take my brother’s girls’ car to the PHX airport, pickup Gil, then head to KDVT and depart, leaving the car for my brother and his girl to retrieve later, but we found the car had a flat tire! We fixed that as quickly as we could and made our way to PHX, picked up Gil (about 15 minutes later than planned), and headed to KDVT. About an hour and a half later we were loaded, fueled, briefed on local area procedures, pleasantries and goodbyes exchanged with the owner, and holding short for departure.
We departed about a quarter after 10am local, and immediately turned south to use what’s known as the “East / West Route”, even though it runs north/south, to get south of PHX through the class B. It’s called the “East/West Route” because as you approach PHX proper you’re told to remain East or West of the center of the airport, and you head north or south over the departure ends of the East/West runways.
Clear of the Class B to the south, we headed towards Tuscon, saw the Dothan aircraft graveyard, and onwards towards El Paso, skirting the border with Mexico along the V16-66 route, which kept us clear of all terrain at just 9500’. Yes, this is a turbo and we could have gone higher, but the seller didn’t include the O2 masks, so we didn’t fill the tanks. The aerostat on a cable was up that day—wow, you’d hate to hit that thing or its cable.
A NOTAM check that morning had caught that E11, our originally planned fuel stop with 100LL for a miserly $3.31/gallon, was out of fuel due to the demand such a great price created. So we stopped at Hurd Memorial (E01) instead, paying $4.75 to a clueless line guy that dragged the fuel hose all over the leading edge of the wings and didn’t support the hose on his shoulder, and fueled one side to the top despite our asking for “partial load, to the tabs each side”. The black scuff marks are still there, I’m hoping they’ll buff out. I was in the bathroom when he did this, or I’d have had words! Didn’t see it when it occurred.
Departing E01, after gear up, we lost the alternator—low volts light illuminated, ammeter showing a discharge. We ran the checklist and it came back online, we continued. I think the combined load of the lights we had on, all the radios, gear motor was enough to pop the field circuit on the solid state ACU. The breakers themselves didn’t pop. We’ll monitor this—I’ve already ordered AlphaBeam LED lights for the landing/taxi lights, and the reduced current draw from those should help.
Safely home at 5:45pm CT, we tucked her in a hangar, quickly took a “we’re home” picture, and went our separate ways!
And that’s the story! I was looking for hangar space at Meacham (KFTW); that’d be convenient, is really close to my home, has long runways, a nice terminal for me to pick up Angel Flight passengers (I’m the NE Texas Wing Leader for Angel Flight South Central). Long waiting list there. Ended up getting a hangar over at Hicks (T67) yesterday, and flew the plane (first solo in it) there last night. I’m sharing a big hangar with one guy, an 80 year old nice gentleman that just finished building a Lancair IV-P. Funny story: John knows the guy, and when I sent the picture of his “hangar available” sign to my wife, it turns out SHE knows the guy and his wife, too! And, it’s about 6 hangars down from John’s place, so future maintenance will be easy peasy.
I guess it was meant to be!
Picture: John, being a goofball and photo-bombing my selfie.
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