One of the first things I learned to appreciate in the pursuit of aircraft ownership is the power of the local aviation grapevine. Powerful as Google is, it still lacks the ability to tap into the tattered, handwritten for sale ads pinned to the bulletin board at your local FBO, and it certainly lacks the ability to monitor rumors of owners who are starting to think about selling their airplanes without the help of the internet.
No, to tap into this plethora of local intelligence, one must connect personally with the folks involved. This is precisely how I found my own airplane. While I lamented the difficulty of locating a specific model, a friend on the other side of the country thought about it and vaguely remembered hearing that her neighbor’s friend happened to have that type and happened to be thinking about selling it.
