Decent Price For Pitts S-1

[Colonel]

Doesn't have aileron on top wing

That's probably the flat-bottom S-1C wing. Does it
have inverted fuel and oil systems? Some don't.

The RV guys use the "half-Raven" oil recovery system
to avoid barfing out all the oil during -ve G.

Everyone wants the four-aileron "round" S-1S wing,
but the older S-1C is still lots of fun:

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/communi ... -1c.70440/

I guess I'm still wondering about damage, internal corrosion of the 320
and cracking / peeling paint.

I remember a guy on the Acro list, I think it was an S-1C that he had
sold three times. Every time he got divorced he had to sell it, then
earn enough money back after he was single to buy it back. Then,
he would get divorced again and have to sell it. Again.

Some airplanes are just in your karma.

[digits]

I've learned to put the "make an offer" in the same category as the "call for price" ads. Don't bother. You'll always be disappointed and the price is way too high.

If they really want to sell, they'll put a price in the ad.

Only exception maybe if it is a rare top of the line airplane. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.

[Colonel]

Doesn't matter if it's a car, motorcycle, airplane, house, etc ....

Some sellers need the money. Some don't. You need to figure
out as quickly as possible, which one you are dealing with.

You might not admire his hairpiece, but you can learn something
about buying used cars from Rotten Ritchie the used car salesman
from Dallas. Go in low and shock them. It's psychological.



If the person is offended and tells you to fuck off, good. You
have now identified someone who isn't serious about selling, and
you can stop wasting your time on them.

If the person does respond to the stink bid, you're going to be
able to work the price down.

[David MacRay]

Cash in hand is pretty powerful too. When a person actually sees money it loosens them up a lot.

[Scudrunner]

I am happy to report that my father and I have purchased this machine.

Now the fun part ferrying a Pitts to Calgary then to the Vancouver.

No transponder a handheld radio, no electrics other than a battery to start it and a 22 Gal fuel tank.

[Slick Goodlin]

That’s awesome, Scud.

[Colonel]

I am happy to report that my father and I have purchased this machine.

Congratulations! You will have a LOT of fun with it!!

One piece of advice: don't run it out of gas. Keep the legs short, lean
the mixture for max airspeed and ALWAYS top off the fuel tank before
every flight. If you are unhappy on final, left arm goes forward and go
around, and full tanks gives you the option to be choosy about your approaches.

Handheld works fine with external antenna. Rig a power connector to it,
and the same with the GPS. Keep an eye on your ground speed! Many times
I have had to divert because of increasing headwind resulting in insufficient
fuel reserve at my destination. This made the guys on my wing REALLY happy,
but that's why I was lead.


Enough time has gone by that I think I can mention I had a portable mode C
kit for ferrying Pitts. This goes under your left arm. A mirror is required to
see the numbers, is all.



I had an aluminum plate for the ground plane of the transponder antenna
that I mounted in the belly over the lexan. ATC seemed to think it worked
ok. The frequency is so high, the wavelength is very short, so you don't need
much ground plane area. See FAA AC 43-13.

PS. The zip ties were TSO'd by Frieburger and Finnegan.

For some odd reason, I am reminded of the time I was IFR at 11,000 over
Cuba in a Pitts. Funny how memory works.

On a different trip, I remember Miami Center gave us all three squawk
codes, which is retarded. Lead squawks, wings are standby. Problem is
my Dad's transponder was U/S, so I reached down every 30 seconds and
switched my code between his and mine, which would have been a garbled
mess with three aircraft squawking in such close proximity anyways. The
really weird thing, is that he knew afterwards that I was doing it, without
any discussion of that beforehand!

I'm so proud of you. Now, every time you take off, four Transport Inspectors
are going to run into a room to decide what to do about it!

The good news is that you are now a member in good standing of the

[Scudrunner]

Thanks ! good thing about being in backward canuckistan is I can get away without a transponder most places.
Only hiccup on my route for sure will be T-Bag and St Andrews.
Shit these days they will probably welcome the distraction, Ill be nice and call first but heck I was the only one in the circuit at Springbank in a Super Decathalon today
"cleared for whatevs"

lightweight alternator for the electrical system we intend to install then
I was looking at the Trigg Transponder, it has a remote box with a head thats
only 2.5 inches deep (gawd that sounds dirty)
https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/catalog/a ... t21exp.php
not a lot of room behind that panel.
The handheld will do just fine for a radio because after this haul it ain't going to far anyway.

She's a toy to have fun with not impress the panel aficionados.

[Colonel]

Consider removing the alternator and regulator and
just running one of those lithium batteries that you
recharge after every flight.

Get the 680 and save the money and weight of a
charging system. Battery weighs 4 lbs, dude:

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/ ... teries.php

Gary Ward uses them, and he beats the shit out of
everything. If they're good enough for Gary ....

Peter's certified S-1T did not come with an alternator
from Aviat if memory serves. He carried around a little
charger and an extension cord.

I've done the same thing before I moved my regulator
behind the firewall.

[Colonel]

Also - dunno if you have one of those heavy Prestolite starters or not ....

Consider replacing it with a B&C. I don't like Sky-Tech (I have both). Saves
almost another 10 lbs.

If you replace your battery with lightweight, remove the alternator and
regulator and wires and replace the starter, that's a big weight savings in
a little airplane that doesn't weigh very much. Every 5 lbs you can save
is roughly equivalent to adding another horsepower.

Oh, I keep forgetting to mention. Metal blade prop, short fuselage. You're
going to see a lot of pitch-yaw coupling at slow speeds. Like on the runway
when the tail goes up and down. You can start with 3-point (and do them
for the rest of your life) but it does great wheel landings, too. Just remember
to plant one main before the other.

Also with the metal prop ... in a hammerhead, you will need to feed in right
rudder as you slow down and the slipstream contracts, and right aileron as
you slow down and they lose effectiveness to oppose the torque. During the
pivot, be thinking about putting the stick in the front right corner, to avoid
going over on your back due to gyroscopic precession in the pivot.

Actually, the hammerspin is an awful lot of fun in the Pitts. An inverted spin
the safest kind, because the rudder is so effective - it's not blanketed.

Remember, spin recovery:

1) throttle to idle
2) let go of the stick (really)
3) full rudder opposite the yaw at the gas cap. Look at the gas cap.
4) both hands pull throttle to idle. This forces you to let go of the stick.

Pilots have a BIG problem with this, but anything you do with the stick makes
a spin worse. Let the ailerons and the elevator trail. Let the aircraft unload
and the alpha decrease. Beggs-Mueller. Just stop the yaw.

The four bars think I'm full of shit, which is why everyone on board AF447 and
Colgan 3407 are dead. If they had let go of the control column, everyone would
have lived. Fucking four bars. Their combination of ignorance and arrogance is
particularly unpalatable to anyone with a clue.

When you get a Pitts, you need to learn to land it, and to learn to unspin it.
We'll talk about tailslides later.

Get two sets of main tires and tubes and try to burn them off as fast as you
can. If you can get 300-500 landings in your first month of ownership, the
sight picture and process will be burned into your DNA and that skill will be
there for the rest of your life. You will be able to close your eyes and see it
happen.

Like buying a new pistol, buy ten boxes of one thousand rounds of ammo and
burn them off in a month. That's 20 trips to the range in 30 days, 500 rounds
per visit. After 10,000 rounds through the pistol in a month, if you can't shoot
it well then, you won't ever be able to.

The importance of compressing your experience (training) into a short period
of time cannot be over-emphasized. 1000 hours of flying in one year will make
you a LOT better pilot than 1000 years of flying over 20 years, but your logbook
(which is all anyone cares about) will look the same. But you will be a VERY
different pilot.

I remember some @sshole wrote about the Pitts for FLYING or some other magazine,
and from his journalistic pinnacle of knowledge and skill, advised the readers
to minimize the number of Pitts landings to reduce the accident exposure.

What a loser. You accept the challenge, and you practice near-OCD, and you get
better and better at it, and after a while, you master it. You can effortlessly do
it with single-digit percentage of your brain.

Ask Neil Peart. Then, people will tell you how lucky you are, to be that good at
something difficult and worthwhile. Yeah, lucky. Just like Mark Knopfler is "lucky".

PS. You can see why I am not eligible to hold any flight instructor rating in Canada
any more, according to TC. I clearly lack the knowledge, the skill and the experience
wrt aviation and the art of instruction.