We bought a plane!

We bought a plane! 

Besides, “I do!” and “I’m a father!”, there are few phrases that will bring a bigger smile to your face and greater satisfaction to your soul than those words.  So let me say them again, but louder.

WE BOUGHT A PLANE!!!!

…and what a beauty.

Actually, we weren’t even actively looking for a plane.  Oh, sure, we had agreed that once we retired and moved to Colorado, we’d buy our own plane but not now.  Then serendipity stepped in.  The club that we belonged to raised their hourly rates because no one (except us) was flying.  The economy was such that the price of used planes had plummeted.  So, on Monday morning while I was waiting for my computer to become fully operational (thanks to UL’s crack IT Department, a full boot up takes upwards of 10 minutes on a good day) I began surfing the used plane sites.  Lo and behold, I found a sparkling Cessna 172XP with only 1,700 hours since it left the Cessna factory.  By contrast, the club planes we were flying had upwards of 10,000 hours and one over 13,000.  My first question was, “what the hell is a 172XP?”  Well, it turns out that the 172XP was sold as the commercial version of the T41 Cessna that the Air Force had been using to train its fighter pilots.  The XP stands for “extra performance”.  Woo hoo!  I had found a yellow Honda S2000 with wings!

While the plain vanilla 172 has a 160 horsepower engine, this beauty has a 210 horsepower.  The run of the mill 172 that the club owns, when fully fueled, has only enough payload capacity to carry a normal sized pilot and 3 people the size and weight of swimsuit models.  The XP will carry 52 gallons of fuel and roughly 700 pounds of people.

Since, I reasoned, Jolene is so devoid of a sporting spirit that she frowns on me flying with swimsuit models, this is just the ticket.  In addition, the extra horsepower will really pay off when we move to Colorado.  In case you haven’t thought about it, an average cruising altitude in Illinois is the same as the average taxiing altitude in Colorado.

To make a long story marginally shorter, I placed an offer and the offer was accepted!  Now came the hard part of actually acquiring the plane.  Buying a plane is very similar to buying a house.  The similarities are, the financing, the inspection, the title search, the insurance, etc.  The big difference is no one to help you negotiate the morass of paperwork, which is made infinitely more complex by the contribution of the FAA.  Anyone who has had a classic bureaucracy experience with the motor vehicle bureau, think about the motor vehicle bureau combined with the IRS add bureaucratic steroids and you are beginning to get the picture.

Eventually, I signed enough paper to fill a 172 and the plane was mine.  One small problem, I now owned a plane that was vacationing in California.  Given the 2,000 intervening miles, the winter weather across the country and my business travel schedule (that didn’t include California) and I had my next challenge.  Enter my savior!

 

No, this isn’t one of the swimsuit models, stay with me here, will you!

This very capable lady is a commercial pilot building hours; my new friend, Sheri.  She agreed with a friend and instructor (Eric) to fly my new baby from where it was basking in the California sun to the snow drifts surrounding Waukegan airport in Illinois.  (I would show you a picture of “friend and instructor”, really great guy, but not nearly as “picturesque”.)

So, on February 3, my two new friends and my new plane turned out over the beautiful Santa Monica harbor and headed east.  Over the next 4 days, while doing just enough work to keep me employed, I tracked the progress minute by minute on FlightAware.COM.  This site provides not only a moving map updated every minute in real time but also enough data (altitude, airspeed, heading, etc.) to keep my engineer’s heart happy.  The first day took them from Santa Monica to Chandler (near Phoenix) Arizona.  The second day took us (me vicariously) to a small airport on the southwestern most tip of Texas.  While just previously, I had been holding my breath, watching my new addition skim only 12 miles north of the Mexican border and convinced it would be shot down as a drug runner, I was glad to see it land at around 3 in the afternoon.  I thought that we were done for the day and was surprised when “we” took off again and headed north.  At this point, I’ll turn the story telling over to Sheri.

We had just landed and discovered that this airport consisted of a single cracked asphalt runway and a mobile home that served as the center of flight operations. 

 

This “airport”, miles from anything resembling civilization, was manned by a man and his son who were “dentally challenged” and REAL glad to see us.  I was beginning to get that feeling of being an actor in the film Deliverance.  I whispered to Eric, we’re not staying here overnight.  I quickly began fueling the plane while Eric was planning our next leg.  As soon as I finished, the son, about 20 years old, sidled over and said, “you sure are one mighty fine looking woman”.  Suddenly, I began hearing the sound of banjos, I grabbed Eric and we were off.

I’m back.  At around 11PM that night, they landed at Centennial, near Denver, Colorado.  The next day, February 5, revealed a winter weather system completely blocking any chance of passage from Colorado to Illinois.  Saturday, February 6, the weather had cleared a narrow channel sufficient to allow a flight through.  At around 8:00 that night, my new beauty and my two new friends landed at Waukegan.  Since it was dark, and Sheri and Eric were unfamiliar with Waukegan airport, I thought I would play lineman and guide them in.  We’ve all seen those intrepid souls with the two flashlights guiding a plane in. Well, let me tell you, they are braver souls than I to stand in front of a 6-foot diameter spinning propeller!

Home at last.

Here is the ritual handing over of the keys. 

 

Followed quickly by the ritual toasting with the Margaritas (alright, I made THAT ritual up).  Interestingly enough, after flying from Santa Monica to Waukegan, Sheri was carded before she could order a drink!

Here it is in the daytime.

 

After living in California for so long, Jolene claims that poor N179XP is saying, “I’ve been a good little plane, why am I being punished by being banished to Illinois?”

As you can see, besides being virtually brand new inside and out, it is really nicely outfitted.

 

Now, Michelle claims that there is really only one switch to turn the plane on and off and the rest of these are just for show. 

  

Of course, she also calls the pre-flight, the “presumptuous and self-important dance around the plane” but that’s Michelle. 

It has an autopilot.  Not of course one where the plane flies itself while you audition for the mile-high club (imagine THAT NTSB report).  But once you trim the altitude and set the heading, on a long flight it pretty much does fly itself.  It also has a music jack input that allows you to listen to music but still pay attention to traffic control communications since the music automatically mutes when someone is communicating by radio.  It has a constant speed prop for blazing climbs yet great fuel efficiency and the previous owner threw in a tow bar, tie down straps and a spare headset so now we have 2 for us and 2 for passengers.  

So far, we’ve had two relatively short flights and it’s just WONDERFUL!  We’ve tried for a long flight but the weather is being, well…Illinois.  But look out this summer.  We have New York, Boston and Colorado on our list.