I kept up with this discussion thru page one, and then quit following it. This evening I decided to jump to the end of it and see what was going on. I ended up re reading the entire thread from start to finish to figure out what went wrong here. Best I can tell, Mr. Ellsworth wanted advice on the value of a certain 150TD he has for sale.
The value of a highly modified aircraft, especially something on the bottom of the food chain like a 150 is best defined the same way the State of Georgia defines and teaches us what the value of a piece of real property is... "The Fair Market Value of a piece of real property is what a willing seller.... and a knowlegable buyer, would agree to, at a bonafied, armslength transaction"
As expected, the discussion wound around to anything tailwheel and while Jared thinks we have deviated from the original post, it does help justify the purchasing and owning of a taildragger to understand tailwheel flying in general and in particular the problems with obtaining quality instruction, securing insurance, etc.
Where things went astray is apparently a misunderstanding on Mr. Ellsworth's part about the statement George Abbot made about a previously Canadian registered 150TD he had considered pruchasing. Unless there is something here we are not privvy to, I did not read anything George wrote that said he looked at Mr. Ellsworth's 150..... just that he had at one time in the past looked at a 150TD and didnt't like the records.
At this point things went from educated discussion to anarchy.
In defense of George's discussion about Canadian aircraft (or aircraft from virtually anywhere outside the US), there are huge gaps in the maintenance records for virtually every aircraft from abroad and lots of time is consumed by maintenance personnel combing thru all the records trying to reconstruct what was done, when, and how, and we are used to Form 337's and expect to find them for major alterations and repairs and this also slows down the process as each STC has to be considered and whether the proper REQUIRED documentation relating to the conversion (such as blueprints) is present and accounted for. Indeed, a US airplane can be as much of a problem. but you at least have the FAA records to fall back on.
I've been somewhat involved in importation of several different aircraft, to one degree or another, a 310 from Germany years ago, a Grumman Cougar from England, a P-51 from Canada, and all had their problems. What I have learned from all of them is that the countries from which they hail are all proud of paperwork, the German airplane had boxes of records to back up its history, but turned out to be useless dirvel, with whole pages devoted to mundane items such as packing wheel bearings and cleaning and gapping plugs, items covered by a 100 hr or annual checklist that deserved no further documentation, and that the horrendus corrosion in the wing was apparently not of concern to the German mechanics.
What I have found (in my small limited sample), is that for all the bad handwriting that US mechanics have (and bad spelling and grammer too) US aircraft records are more likely to be complete and cover all the major repairs and alterations, replacement of important parts and such than any other countries aircraft. Foreign aircraft records tend to focus on the "I removed this screw, I installed this screw" type documentation, while ignoring the big meaty things, either thru omission or because the work was not done. This makes US buyers shy away from foreign aircraft.
Charles
