Cessna 340 or Piper Malibu or?

[Colonel]

Free advice to anyone buying a (certified) airplane:

A "fresh annual" is worthless.  Really.  You would not
believe what junk gets pencil-whipped by unscrupulous
AME's.  At the risk of pissing off people, 95% of AME's
are either incompetent or unscrupulous.  Once that are
actively both are quite something to watch in action.

Have [b]YOUR [/b]AME - not his - do a pre-purchase inspection,
check the logbooks and AD's and produce a list of snags
and the parts and labor cost to repair them, which I
guarantee you will be much, much longer than his AME.

If I had a nickel for every time a new owner told me
that his first annual (with a different AME) was really
expensive ...

The solution to that, is to have [b]YOUR [/b]AME sign off an
annual inspection at the completion of the successful
pre-purchase inspection, with the cost of snag repair
coming off a realistic asking price.

If you do not do the above, you are living a very high
risk lifestyle.

For some odd reason, owners [b]HATE [/b]paying for a
thorough pre-purchase inspection, and prefer having
a $10,000 or $20,000 first annual afterwards. 

Similarly, owners have no problem with letting their
Lycomings sit and rust out and require an extremely
premature overhaul to change out the corroded cam,
lifters and cylinders.  I had one owner tell me that
USD$50,000 for a remanufactured Lyc 540 was pocket
change for him.  Ok.  It's not pocket change for me
for my three 540's:

[img width=500 height=209][/img]

I do not understand much in aviation, any more.
Those are big US dollars, but not to an aircraft
owner, I am told.

[Colonel]

PS  I think I've posted this here before (I know
the AME's on AvCan had the thread deleted because
the facts hurt their feelings)

This is what the landing gear of a C421 looks like
after a $30,000+ annual:

[img width=375 height=500][/img]

[img width=500 height=375][/img]

Despite what the AME's on AvCan say, you
cannot inspect an aircraft component without
cleaning it.

This aircraft was not inspected during it's
$30,000+ annual.

That means that an annual inspection was
not carried out.

For bonus points, the highly incompetent
and unscrupulous AME botched the oil change
on the right engine requiring an emergency
landing immediately after the first takeoff,
as quarts of engine oil were vented overboard.
Looked like it was on fire, actually.

That's what AME's do, in Canada.  Take your
airplane for months, don't do anything to it
(except fuck it up) and then charge you $30,000
to give you back an airplane which is in worse
shape than when you gave it to them.

PS  The AME's on AvCan were hilarious,
defending this unscrupulous and incompetent
AME (sight unseen).  They blamed the owner
for getting the landing gear dirty - and claimed
the owner should have cleaned the landing gear
before the annual, presumably because AME's
are incapable of cleaning?  These are the guys
signing off your airplanes.

PPS  Of course, TC doesn't give a shit.  These
are the guys regulating aviation.  They have
lots of time for horseshit like chasing me and
Chuck around, and seizing my phone and laptop.

[David MacRay]

What if we found two more partners and bought this until we could afford a Malibu?

http://www.controller.com/listings/airc ... 2p-skylane