[hharney]

Originally Posted by JAG

I am sorry to hear of your bad experiences so far - for those of us that aviation is our passion, livelihood and bad habit, we never like hearing of these types of situations.

If it is any consolation, I am 43 years old, a pilot since 18 and a mechanic since 19 - and I grew up in an aviation family - flying and fixing planes from our backyard. I think this gives me some experience in aviation - but everyday I learn how much I don't know. My most recent annual cost me more than I paid for the aircraft, even after doing an extensive pre-buy. That is not surprising knowing we are buying 40+ year old aircraft, and want to fix them properly.

That being said, it is not the most corrupt industry I have seen. It is however, not kind to those who do not take extreme care and responsibility in conducting due diligence. Even after doing extreme research, pre-buys, flights, inspections and everything you think to mitigate the risk of buying an aircraft in poor condition, there will inevitably be issues that come up.

Aircraft sales is no different than car or home sales - except for the fact that airplanes, for the most part, are a luxury item. With that - there comes opportunity. Continue to befriend aviation types and surround yourself with people that have "made their mistakes", and learn from them. Continue to pass on your knowledge as well.

I hope the rest of your annual goes well and hope you get years of enjoyment out of your Skymaster.

Be safe,
Jeff

Thanks for your words Jeff, I hope you misunderstood Julian when he said "most corrupt...." and that he really meant just the broker company he purchased from. The aviation industry is a pretty small niche group and has always been a very special, trusting family in my book. Yes there are scams out there and there are different approaches to avoiding those but in the this aviation family this is rare because the rest of the us (the family) will weed those bad situations out of the industry