The International Cessna^® 170 Association

It's certainly out of my league...but for the P-51 owners/traders of the world.... It surely is a fine airplane... but I wonder how much more desireable it'd be with it's original combat and/or maintanence records?

Another example: I once managed a flight operation (Lamar Savings) which had two King Air E-90s. One of them inherited from a subsidiary company flight dept.
It did not have all it's logbooks, but it came with a fine pedigree from Dee Howard in SAT who had spent luxurious amounts in maintaining it for a previous owner. It had incredible amounts of recent documentation from that fine company (Dee Howard) so the subsidiary flight dept. accepted the explanation of lost logs when they had purchased the airplane. (Stated to be due to failure to pay an export tax from Panama, the Panamanians had confiscated and refused to release the logs. This was a subterfuge, of course.)
Two years later, My CEO told me to sell it.
A potential buyer questioned the lack of early logs and balked at completing the sale until some more research was completed.
The history of the airplane was finally uncovered by a research company working for the buyer, who discovered a foreign gov't accident report in which that airplane serial no. had been out-of-gas and ditched in the Atlantic 8 years prior. Recovered from salt water, salvaged buy a central American salvage company, the logs were "lost" in a "central American sales-transaction" and brought to SAT for major airframe work by Dee Howard company, who insisted on a complete airframe overhaul since it was turbine equipment and FAA would not issue a U.S. airworthiness without detailed flight/cycle times unless airframe overhauled.
My employer took an incredible beating on the sale of that airplane after two full years of trying to get it sold.

But, complete logs aren't important. Naw....

As you can see in the most recent 170 newsletter, I went through the purchase routine for the first time just a few months ago. I was inspired by Bill's 3958V ragwing, and ended up with a 1955 170B model. I agree with the emotional need of finding the right "it". Luckily - and intentionally - the one I ended up with had a complete set of logbooks all the way back to the purchase. As for financing, I checked with all the AOPA and EAA recommended loan places and they simply wouldn't issue a loan on an airplane over 50 years old (at least the would-be owner is less than 50). Anyway, I did the same thing as Bruce and used a PNC home equity line of credit. The PNC branch ladies and my credit union branch manager know me as the "airplane lady" and always ask how everything is going. I think they vicariously enjoyed the excitement as much as I did. Anyway, the best advice I have is to bring a good A&P/AI that you know and trust with you to do the pre-buy inspection. I was with mine during the whole inspection and after he said Okay I started the bargaining. At that point I had been corresponding with the owner for nearly three months. Take your time and make sure you are going through all this effort for what you really want.

Congratulations on your plane. I am really amazed at the number of people that have loan problems. My twin sons have financed several airplanes through the local bank up here. Believe me they probably do not have a very high credit score either. They are using them for air taxi but still they aircraft are all 50 plus years old...Beavers and one 180. The other 180 and 206 are slightly newer.

The salt water dunking actually happens not a lot but does happen up here usually from herring spotters tied behind boats at night. I have helped retrieve several and after taking apart and putting in fresh water for a while we bring them up and totally pressure wash everything. New wiring, instruments, engines and props (or rebuilt) and off they go again. Several have been sold and re sold with the logs indicating what was done. We ACF-50 them and I know of two that have been 20 years since dunking in salt and no ill effects noticed. I think parking outside in an area with pollution would be as bad as a salt water dunking. The resale value was not affected by the salt water dunkings. I guess the turbine crowd is a bit more picky and rightly so with so many to choose from.

As far as logs go, I annual one of the last off the line Cessna 180's for a fisherman. He has lost his logbooks at least 4 times. I am sure they are in his home somewhere. He never flies it and it has less then 300 original hours and is hangared. Of course we have had components off and cylinders too due to rust. Prop to prop shop, etc. I have all records of work done through my invoicing which I have kept for ever so I can reconstruct his. It is a very clean and nice airplane with lost logs. I do not think it would lose its value because of it since it really does have no accident history. I should probably keep a duplicate log so when he loses them again I can just take up with the duplicate and then make another. Probably shouldn't give him his logs back but I really do not want to be responsible for them.

Logs are a lot like reputations ..... Even tho' it's only her future in which I'll be participating.....I sorta wanna know what she did before I met her.

(It's good for me Jamie never insisted on seeing my missing logs.)

Wow George

She did not see your missing logs and hopefully there were no unapproved or undocumented alterations