Sun 'n Fun 2024: Lock & Key Navajo Refurbs

it's another year at Sun and Fun 20124 here in Lakeland Florida and it's been a busy year for Mike Jones aircraft home of the lock and key refer program and uh Mike Jones is here with two fresh refurbs couple of navajos let's talk to Mike Jones and find out what these airplanes are all about here we are Larry at another Sun and Fun a 2024 and this year we've brought two locking key navajos down for the first time in a while we've got a 75 LK it's a locking key that we did about 8 years ago and we got the aircraft back bought it back from the owner and we spent about $300,000 going back through the airplane bringing the aircraft back up to our standards we also got a brand new locking key n80 limi kilo we've kind of designated locking keys with a LK in number and that is our latest and greatest locking key that we did and this airplane's got the the latest and greatest avionic package in it with the TXI 600's and the Garmin autopilot the Eis engine management system and it's got the Garmin uh weather radar gwx 75 and it's a Exquisite paint and interior very very very expensive paint interior job that we did on the aircraft the biggest thing we do on these aircraft Larry is we get them to impeccable standards we call it a little showpiece it's an airplane that typically people don't want to get rid of it it's kind of like a converted uh classic Corvette that went out of uh production and that people bring it up to impeccable standards and that's kind of what we're doing with the piper Navajo it's one of the best aircraft they ever built went out of production in 1984 and we're just taking a great aircraft that Piper built and adding the latest and greatest modifications and stcs that are available for the aircraft our program starts at 1.5 million for a brand new locking key and then we have about $600,000 worth of options to do on the aircraft that's kind of up to the customer how far they want to go with it this aircraft right here the latest one that we just did books out for a million 725 it appraises and finances for that amount of money I've also got the used locking key over here that we just did it also appraises and finances and they're holding value very good uh from the Productions of the aircraft when we started back about 20 years ago so if somebody wants a cabin class aircraft uh we call it the Bahama SUV people love them down here in Florida they load the aircraft up with 7t long Wing lockers nose baggage rear baggage uh eight seats cabin class potty it's even got a private uh Coran door to shut for the rear for the potty area great utility airplane and it's a Workhorse for this Nea Woods for people want to travel to the Bahamas 2 3 400 nautical miles and load the aircraft up with their equipment and and supplies to the Bahamas it's also a great short field aircraft take off and Lins a very good short field capability very very easy to fly we we always promote that it's an aircraft that's uh easy for low time Pilots to transition to from the single engine to the light twin and on up to the cabin class hey Larry one of the two of the biggest passions I have in aircraft renovation is I love bringing classic aircraft that went out of production and bring them up in impeccable standers we just did the baron last year and took that aircraft which is not out of production but not many barings are being produced trying to give them a different price range potentially for an aircraft has brought up to impeccable standards that is my number one passion we've been doing this for about 20 years taking the piper Navajo bringing up to impeccable standards we call it a showpiece when we get done with it we also love to do other aircraft if You' got an aircraft that you would love to renovate to a locking key standards we sure would love to talk to you about it our second passion is bringing an agan Fleet 10 20 30 40 50 years out there that's flying that still flies and something might not ever happen to their a crowd for the next 50 years but when it comes to our shop we found a lot of neglect just for an annual inspection that needs to be caught up and brought up to real airworthy standards and there's some great great maintenance shops out there and I think we've got one of the uh one of the greatest maintenance shops out there we'd love to have your aircraft for an annual inspection and bring it up to a Mike Jones annual standard go for and if you want to see who we're all about come to Murphysboro Tennessee to Mike Bravo tangle we got a brand new $4.5 million facility we got roughly 24,000 square ft and you can come see what you'll see that we're a different company we're a company if you don't want it done right uh don't come to us but we'd love to have your business and we're a company that loves to do things the right [Music] way

Channel: AVweb

Views: 11,153

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Id: s_ljYhAfq8A

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024