As you know from my earlier posts, I sold my Piper Archer III in 2014 and took her to Subang (KL) for a change of registration to the US register. That was the last time I saw her, and I will never see or fly her again. She crashed on the 15th of November 2015 near Senai Airport. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt; she protected her pilot while “sacrificing” herself.
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Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. ~William Shakespeare
Her ladyship, 9M-DRJ, will be repatriated and become a US citizen once again. The new owner decided to move her back to the N-register. There are many advantages of doing that. The maintenance is more straight forward and keeping a FAA pilot license current is easier too. The biggest advantage is probably that getting an IR rating on a FAA PPL can be done, which would be fun with this plane, because it is fully equipped for IFR flight. Read the rest of this entry »
9M-DRJ For Sale
As some of you have picked up from my earlier post, my somewhat sudden move to Dubai requires me to sell my Piper Archer. This is not an easy step for me, but I don’t want her to be on the ground for too long. Aircraft that don’t fly much, don’t last long.
To make this as fair and transparent as possible, I have put all the information about the airplane into this post. Thankfully, the previous owner of 9MDRJ was extremely helpful and open, but before that, when I was still looking for a plane to buy, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information and I was generally surprised how little effort the sellers put into making the process easy for prospective buyers. I hope that won’t be a problem in my case.
I am available for test flights on 8/9 and 15/16 November. Having gone through the process of buying an aircraft recently, I can assist with the necessary paperwork (i.e. certificate of registration, insurance, maintenance organization etc). The airplane can be handed over with immediate effect. If the insurance company is agreeable, I may be able to add the new owner to my insurance cover, so that the new owner can start flying while sorting out the paper work.
If you are interested in buying this airplane, please use the contact function on blog.flyinasia.com or send me a message on Facebook.
9MDRJ – Panel
Busy Senai Airport and Beautiful Flying Weather
Today we had beautiful flying weather and Senai airport was teeming with GA activity. A heart warming sight after many weeks of being grounded because of haze and recently because of aircraft maintenance.
On a day like this it is bad form to talk about money, but anyway, today I picked up 9MDRJ after the Annual Maintenance and paid a couple of bills, which prompted me to provide some pointers to the operating cost of small Malaysian registered GA aircraft.
Petronas Fuel Truck at Senai Airport
After my post on aircraft choices, which touched on the subject of fuel availability in South East Asia, I got a few questions whether it is possible to convert an Avgas CofA aircraft to Mogas.
Common wisdom in the Malaysian GA community is that the DCA of Malaysia does not permit Mogas for CoA aircraft. There is an Airworthiness Notice No 42 dated 1 April 1987, which does not seem to close the door to the use of Mogas altogether, but sends the message that any attempt to get this approved for an aircraft on the Malaysian register will cost more than what you can ever hope to save by switching to the cheaper fuel.
As they saying goes: it only takes two things to fly – airspeed and money. However, while it is usually better not to think too hard about the money you spend on flying, it is a great thing to know your airspeed.
Recently, I found out what it takes to fly without knowing your airspeed. After take-off, the airspeed seemed to come alive very late and be stuck at about 60 knots. By the time I decided that something is wrong with my airspeed indicator, I was already airborne and not enough runway left to abort the take off. I figured it is safer to fly as planned and use power, attitude, ground speed and eyeballs to fly at a safe speed. It turned out to be rather easy to achieve a straight and level flight without airspeed. After all, what speed can you possibly fly at with a 70% power setting without climbing or descending? The real question was, how would I achieve a reasonable approach speed and probably for the first time in my flying career I actually listened to ATC telling me wind speed and direction in their landing clearance.
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
Diamond DA40 Test
I have decided to buy an aircraft. Whether that is a wise decision is questionable, but for me it is the right one.
To be honest, there is no business case for this. Renting is likely the cheaper option even if I am going to fly a lot. With renting I would have no maintenance headaches, no unexpected costs, zero cost when I am not flying and so forth.
So the question is, whether the extra hassle and money would be worth it. For me the answer is ‘Yes” for these reasons:
Fly in Asia 