9M-DRJ and me

Hurray – I bought an airplane! You probably ask whether I ended up buying the Cessna 182 or the Diamond DA40.  Well, neither.

The thing is that I forgot to talk about money in my first post.  The issue is that you need to have enough money left to maintain and fly the aircraft.  If you max out your budget buying the plane, you won’t be happy.

So I decided to go for a relatively new and affordable Piper Archer III.  It does not have a glass cockpit.  The instruments are all analog with two VOR/Localizer CDIs one glide-slope indicator, ADF, KAP140, KLN89B, etc. – basically the original Silvercrown Bendix/King stack. One of the coolest features is the Piper Aire air conditioning.  I don’t think you can go wrong with an a/c in the tropical climate down here.   The call sign is 9M-DRJ and I will post a lot more about my new toy.

9M-DRJ Instrument Panel

Today I flew my own plane for the first time after I picked it up from the 50/100 hours inspection.  It was poor bliss. I just showed up when I was ready and my plane was waiting for me. In my book there is nothing more exhilarating than flying in your own aircraft knowing that nobody else will sit in your seat unless you say so. (no changing seat position and adjusting seat belts anymore!)

The biggest issue with the Archer III is that it has a bigger engine (180 hp) but the same amount of usable fuel.  I don’t think you can stretch it much farther than 500 nm.  I will keep track of my fuel usage and report back.

The biggest advantage is that, as far as airplanes go, maintenance and parts are relatively cheap.  I can actually afford to fly my plane as much as I want.

Of course, I got a healthy dose of what it means to be an aircraft owner straight away.  After I spent one and a half hour in the training areas, I wanted to go back to Singapore, Seletar.  After three hours of waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, I hit the start button, and …. nothing! The battery was flat and it turns out it is about two years old, which is a lifetime for batteries.  I am trying to get this fixed tomorrow so that I don’t have to wait at the Woodlands checkpoint and instead just fly to Singapore.  Thankfully, the aircraft came with a parking space at the compact parking area of Seletar airport.