Finance
$500 Per Month?
 I’ve always believed that everyone can own an airplane. Indeed, I’ve noticed that many of the people who are now jetting around in Gulfstreams or Challengers got started in Champs, Cubs, Stinsons, Cessna 150s, Cherokee 140s or similar entry-level airp |
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10 Affordable Classics
 Affordable classics might seem an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, but in fact, there are more of them available than you might imagine. Before we could home in on the top 10, however, we had to define exactly what we meant by “affordable” and “c |
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An Advanced Course In Engine Management
| Today, bookstores have shelves of self-help and how-to books targeted at people just like me. You know, books like Brain Surgery For Dummies, Taxes For Dummies or The Idiot’s Guide To Juggling. Th |
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Avgas Alternatives
I did something incredibly stupid the other day. My fuel is on an open account, and the price is always buried in a seldom-seen monthly statement. So, I asked the price. The nice young
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Buy Your 1st Bird
 “I’ve sold airplanes to student pilots with two or three hours in their logbooks,” says Jim Sherman, regional manager for Premier Aircraft Sales. “In the past couple of years especially, half of my clients have been low-time pilots, first-time buy
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Buying Your First New Airplane
 A brand-spanking-new airplane. There are few thrills and accomplishments as satisfying and special as buying a factory-new airplane. To the new owner, a new bird is the epitome of symphonic beauty and brilliant engineering; a powerful engine and supple, luxurious leather interior combined with the latest in navigation and communication technology, which, in many cases, outpaces commercial airliners. And it’s all yours.
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Buying Your First Plane
 In most cases, the first question a pilot must answer is the obvious one: How much money are you willing to spend on an airplane? In the majority of cases, this will be a finite number that will make t
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Got Insurance? Are You Sure?
 A pilot rents an airplane from a fixed base operator. After an hour of flightseeing, he returns to his home airport and is cleared to land behind an arriving biz jet. The pilot gets into a small bit of leftover wake turbulence, the rental aircraft wobbles |
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Money-Saving Maintenance
 Those pilots who have ever found themselves paying huge chunks of money on maintenance bills know that they can get quite expensive. What most people don’t realize, however, is that there are other s |
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New vs. Used
 There’s no denying the fact that all pilots love airplanes and, if given the chance, they would all buy and own one. That’s the easy part. Buying one is a whole different story, however. And it all
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No Worries With iFly
 I was introduced to a new kind of flying at an open house in Long Beach, Calif. Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh and cofounder of iFly, spoke of the “world’s first exclusive aero club,” a membership-only venture that provides shared acc
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Partnership Aircraft
 Would an aircraft partnership save you money or allow you to fly a bigger and better airplane for less than you’re spending now? A partnership, or shared aircraft ownership, is one of the oldest and sometimes most practical forms of owning an airplane. |
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Saving Money On Fuel
 I was told when I bought my first single-engine airplane back in the last century that I could estimate my total hourly operating cost by multiplying fuel expense by three. In those days, I flew a Glob
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Secrets For Buying Undervalued Aircraft
 Whether the stories are real or just urban legends, sooner or later, every hangar-talk session turns to a tale of someone finding that cherry-red Bonanza sitting in a barn in the middle of nowhere a
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Take A Second Look
 It was so long ago that I’ve forgotten exactly who said it to me. I’ll never forget what he said, however.
I was a teenager and had been expressing one opinion after another with
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The Need For Speed!
 Go ahead, admit it. When you read all of those pilot reports, you skim them, looking for the cruise speed, then go back and read the rest. It’s a natural thing. We all love the idea of going fast. Bu
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We're Headed For The Future
 To borrow a line from my favorite songwriter and performer, Neil Diamond, aviation is “headed for the future and the future is now.” If you’ve ever been in the market for an airplane, 2008 is a banner year to buy. |
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Because response to Plane & Pilot’s “