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First time aircraft ownership

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Neal

Forums Chief Pilot
Staff member
Joined
Oct 31, 1996
Posts
686
Type aircraft owned
Carbon Cub FX-3
Base airport
KFCI
Ratings
COMM, IFR, MEL, SEL
In 2017 I went to a RV show (driving type) on a rainy weekend and decided to order a motorhome (40ft Class A) which was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, it's been an amazing experience. Just prior to that I decided to get back into flying and was going to go down the full path of retraining on all of my ratings post Air Force. I took a flight in a Cessna 172 (glass panel) with an instructor for 0.9 and it was nearly $240! Wow! Beyond that, I was bored and didn't continue and bailed.

In 2018 I took a trip in my RV (driving kind) and went to Oshkosh. Just to see the airshows, that's it. Then 2020 comes along and I start seeing Trent Palmer videos on YouTube and my eyes were wide open - that looks like so much fun! That summer I decided to look at buying a CubCrafters EX-3 and for that I needed a tailwheel endorsement which was in July of 2020 in a Sport Cub, 105 degrees outside, two of us non lightweights and I was not feeling it, I quit and bailed on the EX-3 buy. My passion was RVing and that's all I wanted to do. I wasn't feeling the flame being rekindled for flying UNTIL....I drove home. Yep, I had it again so I returned in the fall to finish my tailwheel endorsement and put in an order for a FX-3 (so stupid expensive, but I digress).

So now I'm facing first time aircraft ownership. All I know is from my Air Force days in having a crew chief, a maintenance squadron, and yep, an ejection seat! Would I be able to keep my plane as safe as what I flew and trusted in the Air Force (A-10's)???

I took delivery in August of 2021 in Oregon and after the fly-off and some warranty items addressed I finally got it home and had to learn real fast how to be an aircraft owner and maintainer. Finding anyone that knows much about cubs in my area isn't easy and fast forward to my first condition inspection by a CubCrafters service center I can't say I had a lot of faith in that process. Learning the logbooks for airframe, engine, propeller, doing oil changes, outfitting my hangar (as a confirmed hoarder) have been quite the learning experience but admittedly fun. Trying to find a place to get a condition inspection done when that came around in May of 2022 wasn't easy. Asking my local facilities and they said they could do the 100hr on the engine, which come to find out as my engine is experimental there is no such thing, but following the pattern is certainly wise. Having to chase down AD's and SB's is odd, you think you would be notified by your manufacturer but that's not how it works at least in my case, sadly. This is the harder part of the process, keeping safe!

The main asset in being an aircraft owner are your peers. Fellow FX-3 owners in my case, we've helped each other, shared lessons learned and it's been invaluable. The venues for doing so aren't great which is one of the reasons I revived Flightinfo.com to create hopefully an active community for aircraft owners to help each other of same Type. I also took to creating YouTube videos which is one of the most valuable free training assets available to us these days to learn how to do about anything. For me just learning how to create videos was interesting and challenging, the flying content or sharing info was secondary! It's not easy to do and I was set on trying to figure it out and that's been fun.

It's coming up on second condition inspection time and I've had more time to settle in as an aircraft owner and it's been a pretty good experience so far. I cannot stress enough to communicate with peers and develop that peer network.

I have a lot more to learn and I'm doing everything I can to ensure my plane is safe and I'm safe. Knowing when to ask for help is always the most important aspect of something like this. Finding that help may be a challenge but you have to try. I was terrified of this in the beginning, hoped for some training on basic tasks such as oil changes, safety wiring, etc. but over time it's falling into place.
 

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