5 TIPS for your AIRPLANE ANNUAL

[Music] we are finally picking up our skyline from our very first annual inspection with it [Music] everything looked great so we talked to the mechanics for a bit and then started pre-flight and was ready to get our airplane back home we brought our airplane to a mechanic at a different grass strip than what we live at it's a busy little grass trip called peach state it is super fun to fly in and out of here always lots happening [Music] so i taxied down to the end kevin was filming me and is driving our car back home and i got to take the fun way home i got to fly home [Music] [Music] bye bye now of course i didn't want to just fly straight home i i took it for a few laps went and had a little bit of fun for myself before i got back to our own home strip and tucked it back away here is a good aerial view of our grass strip it's just under 3000 feet long there's about 20 houses in our neighborhood but it is very well maintained a super awesome fun and sometimes a challenging little grass strip [Music] now kevin beat me home so he was able to film my landing because i i went and had a little bit of fun before i came in to land so it worked out [Music] we were so thrilled to get our airplane back home we didn't really fly it much after we bought it until we got the annual inspection done because we wanted a really good look at our airplane before we started flying it a lot so bringing the airplane home today meant so much for us it meant that we really just got our airplane for the first time it felt like that we finally were set free and felt comfortable going out and about in our airplane now [Music] welcome home mojo [Music] we just got our airplane back from annual inspection and we get a ton of questions about people looking at buying an airplane or might have their first airplane and have lots of questions about the annual so i'm going to give you guys five things to consider about your annual inspection number one your first annual inspection with your new to you airplane is going to probably be expensive unfortunately when you buy an airplane someone else probably had it for a few years and they start to let things go they start to get more lenient on it and typically what i see is that the first year of ownership you pay a pretty high annual because you as a new owner want to get everything taken care of have a nice clean slate so we just got ours back from annual and ours was let me look it up that way i tell you and a very accurate number it's not pretty no i don't want to see what's new okay are you ready for this our first annual and we do have a vintage plane and vintage planes do typically cost more because a lot of old things need replacing our first annual cost eleven thousand nine hundred and forty five dollars and i don't mean to tell you that to scare you away from buying an airplane but also that's the reality sometimes you can have a twelve thousand dollar annual typically if everything is great that's going to be two thousand dollars but if you need a lot of things replaced on your airplane it can go up very very quickly and since this plane is new to us i wanted everything to be perfect and i knew that going into it that it was going to be a pricey annual so what i suggest is to pay into a separate account we've been doing this for years we have bi-weekly out of our accounts go to a separate airplane account and we just feed money in there based on what we project our cost to be that way when annual comes around it's less of a less of a stab in the heart it makes the blow a little bit easier the annual inspection is different from a pre-buy a lot of people for their pre-buy do an annual inspection that way they can do it all at once but for us we did a pre-buy where the aircraft was in montana but we didn't know that guy we didn't go up and see it we bought this aircraft sight and scene because the market is crazy right now so we got the pre-buy done but once we got it back we wanted our own shop to look at it someone that we knew somewhere that we could go check on it and we got our full annual inspection done here number two is shop matters so not all maintenance shops are the same i'm sure you guys know that especially with having cars and other things but with airplanes different shops specialize in different things for example the shop we went to does no avionics work so if we needed help with our radio or if we had avionics in there that we needed some help with we would have never taken it there they just simply don't do that type of work the shop that we went to specializes in vintage aircraft and that's why we went there because they would know this airplane best they know what to look for they know the typical things that break an older aircraft like this so just remember when you pick out your shop to go to one that specializes in your type of airplane speaking of shops they are all not the same quality either there is notes in our maintenance logs that they found some issues but the shops never resolved those issues which is kind of strange so for example when we picked up our airplane our mechanics said hey did you notice that you were missing some of your elevator control in your yoke i said no because it seemed like it was normal but he's like yeah you're missing about this much range when you pull the elevator full aft because the back of it was hitting my turn coordinator the turn coordinator instrument is super long and so whenever you pull the yoke the back of it was hitting the turn coordinator and stopping it from its full movement so they switched it around but they noticed that in the log books a different shop had noticed that that problem was happening and it was bashing the turn coordinator but they never did anything about it it was just unresolved in the log books so go to a shop that's going to fix your problems number three might seem obvious in today's world but schedule early and there's no surprise when your annual inspection is coming up it's the same month every year so call them the month before i would say about 30 days ahead of time and give them a call and get on their schedule on when you can drop it off because the last thing you want is to be grounded because you couldn't find a shop to get into or that you can't get into the shop that you want to go to so be sure to call them early number four is to have a list of things that you want them to look at in your annual now obviously that's their job they're going to look through your airplane but you fly every day you know this airplane better than anyone so start taking a list that's what i do i have a note going on my phone of things that aren't making the plane unair worthy but maybe could one day you start to see something deteriorating things that you aren't sure of or making a weird noise that don't seem like it needs immediate attention you'll get the hang of it but make a list of things or upgrades that you want to give to your mechanic that way they have a starting point of things to go through so our list let me find our list we had a list we wanted to update our brakes we wanted to have him replace our fuel line which was still technically working but it was very hard and brittle and needed replaced so we needed that i wanted an oil sample our engine hasn't been overhauled for a very long time so i want to be sure that we're getting an oil sample sent off every time it's a very small upcharge i recommend everyone to do that i wanted a quick drain for my oil i wanted them to check my nose strut because it didn't seem like it was holding the air like it should so i just had a whole list of things and then of course whenever it went in the shop they found other things that needed replaced and that's what made me have that pretty bill at the end so for example the carburetor air box was cracked like really badly and we had no idea it's a very important part on our airplane so happy that they found that they tried to weld it and it just looked not good so we had to buy a new one and get that replaced so things like that happen we also need a seat track that needed to replace which is also important it sounds not like very important but when you go to take off and your seat is not properly locked and you go sliding towards the back during takeoff not good so anyways have a list give it to them as a good starting point and then let them take care of it from there and my last tip number five is to check your airplane over with a magnifying glass when you pick it up from the shop whether that's your annual or an oil change doesn't matter check all the fasteners check all the screws check all your inspection panels make sure everything is back and tight and looks like how it should i even go as far to check the oil like obviously it should be topped off but what if they forgot to even put oil in like you never know they are humans too so check over everything i know that personally with my airplane i don't teach or do anything out of ordinary for the flight after maintenance i take that flight very seriously and i want to make sure that everything is running right everything is connected again because if you think about it your airplane was just all tore apart in pieces only a day prior so that first flight back be very diligent you also want to check and make sure all your logbook entries are in order and i like mine to be very detailed from my shop about what they did the things that they found and replaced and stuff so go over the log books with your shop before you leave make sure you have one in your engine in your prop and in your airframe logbooks make sure you get all those otherwise it's hard to go back and get them sometimes but yeah just make sure your airplane's put back together we flew the airplane back and then after one flight um which everything looked good we looked all in the cowling and everything but the next time we went to fly flight number two when we did our pre-flight notice that our air intake hose that goes to the engine was just laying in the bottom of our cowling and it was definitely on when we left the shop but it must have been loose and it just came off either during flight or something like that but really really happy that we noticed that the second time so be sure to pre-flight very very well on all of your flights but especially the ones after maintenance and that is my five tips for your annual inspection

Channel: Schmiiindy

Views: 5,460

Keywords: airplane, pilot, aviation, aviator, cessna, cessna skylane, annual inspection, airplane annual, flight vlog, flying

Id: NQg05VDVCmc

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022