Hello,

New to the forum and not sure if I'm posting in the correct area.

I'm 42 and would like to continue my flying. About 10 years ago I started lessons while trying to start a family and earned about 40 hours and unfortunately didn't finish the course. My family and I would like to get back into flying and I'm at point in my work career where I have time and money available.

I'm 6'3 240 and have 2 kids and a wife. Money for a plane is available and I'm thinking of a 182G1000 and would like some feedback from the group. I was thinking the 182 would solve my issues for weight and distance.

thoughts/questions/advice?

 

What's the total weight for the whole family? Full fuel useful load for the 182? How far (nm) do you want to go? How fast do you want to get there?

Having just sold an aircraft , I can tell you it's a buyers market.

 

182 will handle 2 kids and a wife no problem. Load it up with the family, fuel, and baggage and she'll fly 800 nm at 12 gallons/hr. Get the 24 gallon wing tip fuel upgrade and you're looking at a range of 1000nm.

and yet they're still expensive as hell.

 

Sounds like the 182 fits the bill.

Get your medical. No sense in buying a plane you can't fly.

Get the plane and finish your private and then knock out the IFR. There are other expenses to consider:
We broke ours into fixed and operational costs:
Fixed: Insurance, hangar, Taxes, Annual
Operation: fuel, oil, engine/prop reserve, avionics-paint-interior reserve.
Loan costs (if any)

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I'd be happy to send to you - just PM me an email address. You'll be shocked at what the sheet tells you the hourly rate should be. You may want to consider getting some partners in the plane to defray the costs.

Owning a plane really opens up your world and provides a new kind of freedom.

Good Luck!

 

You should be comfortable in that plane, lots of flexibility. Any particular reason you want the G1000? It doesn't make the plane safer, IMO it makes pilots lazy and less skilled, but that's just me.

If you are one day planning on getting an instrument rating and using the capability of the G1000, fine, but if you just plan on flying on nice days(families do appreciate this), then you're just throwing money at a toy.

Get the new Garmin touch-screen GPS/COM/NAV if you want the latest and greatest and learn to fly round-dials. I would however highly recommend any installation of a traffic system, but preferably TCAS if you got either system.

I used to work full-time(still part-time) for an aircraft sales company for piper/socata, so I've worked with all the systems new and old, and trained people with 1000's of hours to 200hrs in a variety of installation combinations and frankly building the basics is always the most important and gives the best results from my experience.

 

Actually this fellow is the one type of buyer who can specialize enough to make having a G1000 worth his time. He sounds like the prototypical rich buyer who will fly the same tail number for 30 years. I say go for the G1000 Skylane, and be warned you are not proficient flying anything else that way. Get an instrument rating for safety, proficiency, convenience, and insurance as well.

 

When I bought my plane (172) I actually wanted a NAVII rather than a G-1000. While I would have loved to have the more fancy avionics, I couldn't justify the added price. I do have the 550 MFD with my KLN94 and it all works great. I was also worried about the price of maintaining the G1000. While they said "we never see these things break" I thought that if I was that one guy who did get the lemon, what was it going to cost me. Now that we have our baby on the way I too am looking at 182s. I believe that it will also be a NAVII model though. I think it will also be a turbo model sinse we fly from VA to OH a lot and getting up to 9000 sometimes kicks my Skyhawk's butt. I will also be getting XM weather next time too.

 

A standard 182 shouldn't have a problem getting to 9000 and being happy. Same thing owning a turbo in engines is like a G1000 in avionics, it just adds cost to maintenance if something does break, although from my experience, the turbo's will cost you, the G1000 seems to be pretty solid.

 

When I was in college the school purchased a single G1000 model...total waste of money but that's another subject...the MFD had issues after a few weeks, our mechanics, then Cessna tried troubleshooting it, swapping screens, etc. with no luck. Cessna ended up replacing a lot of the avionics under warranty and finally fixed the problem for good (as far as I know, the thing is probably still sitting anyway), but from talking to a couple of the school's mechanics if it had been out of warranty the bill would have been nearly 20k if a screen crapped out. True? No idea, but I'm perfectly happy with the $660 it cost me to overhaul the gyros in my Saratoga.