revsmith

we are currently putting our 172 back together in the sids programme. very little remedial work has been needed, however the work involved dismantling/ cleaning and VERY close inspection/testing of EVERYTHING, has involved 4 wks of full time work so far, with the maintainence organization, means a BIG labour bill alone. (several 182's being worked on beside ours have needed substantial remedial / corrosion repairs done in addition), and I would be VERY suspect of a Cessna sids done with a cheap bill.(not done properly in my opinion), under 20,000 unless the owner did a lot of the work under supervision. expect 6 weeks labour cost by $100 hr x 240 hrs(without repairs needed, which is rare) = $24000 min

i'll go with the fastback with coupe vertical fin an no such colour as white once its dirty

think i'll sell my shares and go take the banana for a walk

hello Geoff, met you at dalby yesterday, now I know why you knew your weights. there is another which gets seriously overlooked - c of g . one can be under mtofw but get into trouble real fast if c of g is out. had a personal experience 30 yrs ago, was taking seed out to other farm once in our Cessna . started loading seed and at breakfast decided I had enough for job, but had been loading to rear in expectation of adding more up front for correct c of g yet still below mtofwt. had get to jobitus, and didn't redo c of g calculation, well flight was interesting, great short takeoff an climb ,but didn't trim too well for cruise, hmm, brainwave did calc in flight ,hmm oh dear , got there, landed REAL carefull, got out an tail hit the dirt in front of megaboss (dad , who also is a pilot) , who then rightly gave me an earful about balance an weights, have not done it since, so tis easy to think yeah I'm below gross BUT don't forget c of g whatever the payload weight.