The Arrow’s oil had just been changed for the first time since my ownership. And the landing gear had been cycled a few times to confirm the microswitch that activated the flashing auto-gear-extension disable light had been successfully readjusted. The final tweaking involved a flight test to determine if the engine was indeed not quite producing full takeoff power as per the rpm indication or if the tachometer itself was lying. Simple stuff.
But before we even turned a prop blade, my mechanic friend and I were blindsided by something completely unexpected.
Just outside Tally Ho Aviation’s hangar, Kari Sorenson hopped onto the Piper’s wing and then plopped down onto the copilot’s seat. His eyebrows raised, Kari looked at me and asked, “What was that squeak?”
“What squeak?” I replied, my eyes narrowing. Kari quickly rose off the seat and then suddenly dropped his butt back down with a thud.
“That squeak,” he said, shifting his focus out the open cockpit door and to the right wing.
“It’s a 1972 airplane. It squeaks,” I retorted.
Kari shook his head, got up from the copilot’s seat and said, “That’s not a good squeak.”
Bewildered, I slid out of the airplane and followed Kari who was now on his back underneath the right wing, examining the wheel-well area. He was soon joined by fellow mechanic Rip Quinby.
The next utterance from Kari’s lips was an expletive. And then, “Who did this repair?”
The conversation under the wing became more animated. Starting to grit my teeth, I asked for an English translation. I realized that it was no different at my airline insofar as communication was concerned. But at least with my little airplane, I had the opportunity to really touch and feel the mechanical discrepancy. The difference being that a mechanical problem at the airline most likely would incur a delay and, at worse, a cancellation. But with my own airplane, expletives spoken by the mechanic translated into reaching for my checkbook.
Apparently, a repair within the wheel well, which had been documented four years prior as a result of a hard landing, had not been completed properly. Riveting technique was poor in places and inadequate in others. Rocking the airplane back and forth from the leading edge of the right wing not only produced a squeak but also showed dimpling of the upper skin above the repair. In addition, a section of the repair was cracked, allowing for ⅛-inch worth of movement. Not good.
Becoming frustrated, my expression probably a mixture of fear and anguish, I asked the painful question that only an airplane owner is allowed deference to utter. “What does this mean?”
In a nutshell, the answer was thousands of dollars, not inclusive of paint. The wing required extensive repair, which could potentially reveal additional damage — perhaps to the spar. The alternatives were a) have Kari repair the problem, b) have the wing sent out for repair, or c) locate a salvage wing.
Regardless, flying the airplane risked the possibility of a landing-gear collapse. Kari would refuse to accept it as airworthy at the next annual inspection. It was the middle of summer, and I was grounded. In my airline world, that was called “aircraft out of service.”
Nodding to the small crowd of mechanics and friends that had gathered, I shook my head in disgust and climbed into the airplane. I taxied back to my hangar with a sinking feeling. Honestly, I was embarrassed. I had recently sold the Decathlon because my wife expressed renewed interest in owning an airplane that could go places. Thinking that I had learned some valuable lessons after experiencing mechanical demons with our Cherokee Six, my pre-buy inspection diligence with the Arrow was thorough. As a matter of fact, I had turned the pre-buy into an annual inspection. In the end, that decision made all the difference.
Let me rewind just a bit. After a frustrating search, I finally located a very reasonably priced Arrow with some of the bells and whistles I wanted: a Garmin GNS 430, Aspen system, S-Tec autopilot, JPI engine analyzer — everything a veteran airline pilot needed to keep him out of most IFR trouble. But the caveat was that the airplane had damage history.
I read various articles on airplanes with damage history and discovered that the key was to buy the airplane appropriately, taking into account its decreased value. Although the word “damage” has negative connotations, the airplane is still marketable. Investigating the damage repairs both visually and through logbook documentation is of prime importance.
The broker was very forthright in presenting the Arrow’s damage history, leaving nothing to a chance discovery. Basically, the airplane had minor hail damage and had documented three wing repairs due to hard landings; apparently, it was a common occurrence in the type. Notwithstanding the repair in question, the other two repairs were from more than 20 years in the past, an indication that they were not about to come apart. Regardless, I had asked the shop that performed the annual/pre-buy inspection to give extra scrutiny to the damage repairs.
Shortly after the discovery of the problem, Kari and I had a collective epiphany. We realized that the shop that had performed the annual inspection for my purchase had deemed the airplane airworthy. After a few days had passed, I made a friendly, nonadversarial phone call to the shop. The airworthiness aspect remained unspoken.
As a credit to the shop’s integrity, the broker’s integrity and the seller’s integrity, the crisis was solved, albeit with some compromising on my part. Considering that the situation could have easily become ugly, the compromise was an acceptable loss.
Miraculously, the broker located a salvage wing of the same vintage on the other side of the country in Sacramento, California. Approximately one month later, it was shipped to my home airport in Connecticut. I agreed to pay for Kari’s time in removal and installation. The seller, the shop and the broker bore the cost of the wing, the painting and the shipping.
The wing-salvage solution, rather than the repair solution, completely eliminated the damage history on the right wing — a silver lining. As a bonus, I got to inspect parts of the airplane that most owners never see — quite frankly, a little frightening for an airline pilot. And after selling my wife on the idea, we took the opportunity to paint the entire airplane — another silver lining. By the time you read this column, we should be flying a bright and shiny Arrow II.
Most of my colleagues at the airline would never have experienced the frustration of such events. But if they had, at least they would have developed a greater admiration for airplane design and the mechanics that maintain those designs. The fact that Kari discovered the problem before it manifested itself into a serious problem is a testament to the dedication of a good A&P.
As for buying an airplane with damage history … well, the jury is still out. I am certain that there are plenty of opinions on the subject from folks who are far more knowledgeable than this novice airplane owner.
