My nephew Tony, In Pocatello, in his "new" C-120 (with a tricked out C-85) on his way from Phoenix (point of sale) up to Fairbanks AK (where he is a instructor in the university diesel/heavy equipment school there so i picked his brains about my various small Kubota engine, for free). He blames ME for getting him interested in flying, way back when. He picked this cherry looking bird up for 10K! He had his CFI along, as he is not yet fully qualified/licensed. Both not real big guys, good thing as the climb rate is a bit on the timid side, what with the gear they had on board. The C-85 has Millennium cylinders, which I don't know from squat, but have heard of, and i guess that's a good thing? It sure fired up good and sounded great.

The plane was born in '47, it's owner in '89, that's just wrong.....The ridealong CFI also appeared to be quite young, maybe 30 at most, It is always good to see other then grey hair on a pilot, the younger crowd carrying on with flying etc., we need that as a community. I'm the guy on the right.

Cool!!!! my first little airplane ride was in my Dad's 120 in the early 1960's.

Looking good Tom!

Good for him, and good for you for getting him interested in flying! He’ll have a blast with that little mobile in central AK! Hope they’re trip up the pike goes smooth, he finishes his training soon (awesome version of a PPL long cross country!) and gets out and enjoys Alaska!

MTV

Ditto! Thanks for planting the seed of aviating in this young man. We definitely need some new blood in GA that aren't just interested in flying the heavy metal!

The plane looked great, quite a bargain for 10 K I thought, in this day of 100K + LSAs.
They are taking the Island Park/Ennis/ Townsend route north, about as low a way to get north from Poky as possible, as the climb and ceiling is a bit anemic, the price you pay for a 10 K plane I guess. They couldn't believe my casual references of landing and taking off at 8 and 9 K plus, that's about their ceiling. My powerplant and prop on that airframe would be interesting, as it would be on a T-Craft, I've often thought. But an abomination to purists, and a nightmare to get an airworthiness cert!

Just saw them in Idaho Falls getting a transponder certification when I dropped off my plane for the same. Didn’t make the connection till I was leaving.

If we consider wing area and gross weight rather than engine size, northerly running mountain range to the east of a northerly course, and prevailing westerly winds, ceilings and groundspeed are a gift of the light airplane gods. That is unless we get silly and engine climb in the middle of the big valley.

I was watching that C120 listing on Craigslist and wondered what happened to it once the ad disappeared. Awesome that it wound up in good hands!

Was there something about it that made it 10k? At that price I’d have to try hard not to bite. All the 120/140s I see are 20k + around here.

Courierguy will probably disclose the details on that one. When I was a public school teacher and weekend warrior, I bought only unpopular airplanes like Taylorcraft, Champ, Ercoupe, 175, and Tri-Pacer. I looked for hail dimples on aluminum and ugly cracking paint on good fabric. Good supply like 150 and 172 and low demand results in lower price. Demand for any tailwheel airplane has gone up since my time, but many more being rebuilt after ground loop. That one looks like a rare bargain.

They made it to Great Falls, before it over developed, and are holed up for the night

I believe it was the usual sad tale as to the low price: the widow wanted it gone, as simple as that. I don't know if they beat her down on the price, or paid her more then she was asking just to be nice guys but 10 K it was. He did say in AK it would be 15K absolute min., and up. It sounded great in their disgustingly conservative and legal flyby they did over my place, and I relayed this to my brother when he asked me what i thought about the entire operation. I told him the CFI, though still in knee pants (apparently school is out for the summer) was very impressively level headed and already, at 13 years old I think he was, had an impressive resume and was well on his way to a full time pro aviation career, hopefully the airlines he said. I think he may have been cringing when I started telling my nephew about my last weekends flight ("there I was, at 8200', on a ridge top with knee high sage brush, and the take off only took 100', blah blah blah) when the discussion turned to their climb performance, or lack thereof.

Awesome. Love the enthusiasm in that photo!

It was probably just too much coffee.
They made the border, crossed it, so far so good. Maybe I mentioned it, but my nephew has soaring skills, at least in a paraglider, which ought to help eek the most performance out of the 120/ use lift if it's available.

They just arrived in Fairbanks, 33 hrs from Phoenix, no issues. Sounds like decent time to me? 90 mph....