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Thanks for your responses on your maintenance. However I think the question we have here is what is the cost of "ownership" of a good Skymaster, not necessarily what is the cost of any given annual or years maintenance.
If I'm not mistaken, Herb's bird is essentially "perfect", and has been maintaned and operated in a manner that has placed it in a position to not be expensive to maintain. Conversely a Skymaster that has sat out on the ramp unused and un-maintained for the past 3 years, with close to runout engines, will be extremely expensive to bring to the condition of your plane.
Of course this is a complete guess, but I would imagine you value your plane in the $130g- range, vs a runout which would be worth in the $30g range.
If so, then the premis that one could buy a decent 337 in the $30,000 range, put a few thousand in it, and fly off into the sunset is still incorrect. You may get away with it by buying a $60,000 plane, and maintain it to a bare minimum, but it certainly wouldn't be something that many of us would be interested in flying.
The idea is that you pay one way or the other. Time (ie the year 2010 vs 1990) is only relevant as related to the condition of the plane. This because when the price of a new plastic plane is $500,000, the value of a real airplane stays relatively constant, as related to it's condition (not what year we currently find ourselves in).
So I stand by my premis that you can pay now, or you can pay later. But you are not going to get out of paying in the $80g-$100g range to own a Skymaster that is worth flying.
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