My first plane was a T-Craft. They are a great little plane. With fat tires and a climb prop they will cruise 90 mph while burning 4 gph.

Sky.Junkie wrote:Any other wing folders other than the Kitfox?
What are the chances of finding a Kitfox with a 912i? Or maybe finding one with a bum motor and having a 912i installed?

Chances of a Kitfox with a 912i...in your price range...0%. The engine alone cost almost that much.
Chances with a ULS 100hp.... extremely good.
Other folding wings (in your price range) Avid, RidgeRunner, Sky Raider, Rans, Zenith 701. The Zenith 750's usually run more than 30k.
There has been lengthy debate as to the cost advantage of a Continental/Lycoming over the Rotax with no clear winner.
For what it's worth, my Rotax experience is .. NO oil usage between 50 hour changes, 3 to 4 GPH on car gas. That alone saves me a good 10 to 15 dollars EVERY time I fly. Inexpensive NGK motorcycle plugs, K&N air filters and Fram oil filters.
2000 hour TBO but most run much longer before needing any major work. Wide choice of props. Close to 50 lbs lighter so higher useful load and less weight hanging on the firewall for those inevitable carrier style landings.
It's still a buyers market and there are plenty of great planes out there. Try to get some seat time in a bunch of different choices and have fun!

Thanks everybody!


@8GCBC - I agree that there is no substitute for stick time in each plane. I just needed to narrow the choices down to <5 or so, otherwise there are just too many variables. I also agree about the time frame comment, I'm not looking to buy for likely 6 months or more and then once I know which few planes/engines/etc I'm interested in I'll wait until I can get one in very good condition with an experienced pilot helping me check it out & test fly it.

I'm sure this is a topic of debate but if I was to go with a Kitfox, Zenith 750 or similar what engine would be the most reliable? Not necessarily the top performer, but the one you trust the most to get you out of a grass strip 100mi from any other human.

Also, I really like the Aerotrek A220 but it looks like it is just a EuroFox / Kitfox. Does anyone know the difference between them?

There are a lot of decent options with your requirements, especially if you have a few $K of flex in the price. I ended up with a Murphy Rebel. Side by side, 700lbs usable, stick, conventional gear. I have the IO-240 in mine which I can get down to a 3.8 GPH cruise at 100 mph, or power it up and burn 6 at 125. The airframe is pretty solid and made out of aluminum (ie fairly easily repairable compared to fiberglass). The cargo capacity in the back is great, you can really dump stuff in like the Maules.

I put 26" ABW's on mine and have been doing quite a bit off airport. The gear is a little soft but there are a variety of modifications to strengthen it up.

I saw one hit the forums of murphybuilders for 36k with a O-320 and spring steel gear. If you wanted to save some money and fuel cost, I'd put in a couple k and switch engines with you. For what I'm doing, the extra power is worth the extra weight and fuel, but my IO-240 can hang in there near gross at 10k ft. I've climbed to 14k and it'd still go up.

Also, I really like the Aerotrek A220 but it looks like it is just a EuroFox / Kitfox. Does anyone know the difference between them?

The Euro fox is a copy of the kitfox which is a copy of the avid flyer. Those early models have a different wing than the Model 4 and on up kitfoxes. I don't know anything about the A220 except what I see on their web site and it appears to have the same wing as the model 4 and later kitfox models.

Here's a link to history of the different models of kitfox. http://www.kitfoxaircraft.com/KitfoxHistory.htm My opinion is the Model 4 was the last generation of the original kitfox. The Models from 5 on up are larger and heavier.

Nice model 4 kitfox's with 912 engines do show up occasionally for sale for less than 30K but you usually have to see the add and make a deal on them the first day because they sell very quickly.

"Things that ARE important to me:
-Under $30,000
-Low Fuel consumption
-Solid trustworthy engine/airframe (ideally proven over time)
-Capability of off-airport landings
-Low maintenance cost
-Minimum 2 seat
-Minimum 500lb payload"

The under $30K criteria you set forth as listed above eliminates most of the planes being tossed about.

Something to keep in mind is, if you buy an already flying homebuilt, it adds in many of the same hassles as going certified.

Also, you really should take into consideration things such as insurance costs, parts availability, resale, mechanics who will work on it, etc.

The best certified bang for the buck for planes that can fairly easily be found for under $30K for the things that are important to you as listed are, in my opinion (& in no particular order): Stinson 108, Cessna 120/140, 170 or 172, Piper PA-15, -17, -20,-22 or -16, Aeronca Champ (tandem).

Speaking from many thousands of hours of experience, I present to you that, unless you're into backpacking with an airplane, you lean towards something that will carry the two people who will normally fly in it, plus full fuel, plus 100 lbs or more of baggage.

Good luck!
Tom

I just took my old 172 up for a flight yesterday and realize why I still have not sold it. It is stable, reliable, relatively cheap to own and operate, and will do everything I ask of it. Having owned (still own) other types such as my RANS S-7, it was a pleasure to go flying in the 172. Lot less 'input' needed then the S-7 as far as having to constantly fly the plane. It was a relief not getting bounced all over the sky due to the winds and weather we have been having. The old 172 will do just about everything the S-7 will do with the exception of take off and land in a couple hundred feet. I can put a decent load in the 172 and it is barely noticable compared to the S-7. When the RANS is loaded with two people and some bagage it feels like a slug. I usually fly it solo 99% of the time and a couple of weeks ago my wife flew commercial here to MN for a visit. I flew up to the airport in the RANS to fly her home. Me, her, and her carry-on were in the RANS. When I took off I was shocked at the huge decrease in performance hit I took with it at near gross weight. It felt more like a 65hp Champ than the hot-rod it is when solo.
For the money I find it hard to beat an older manual flap 172. Any when it comes to needing any parts/maintaince, well, they are the Model-T of airplanes...easily fixable if needed and most any competent A&P will have it fixed in no time. Try that with a Rotax powered flivver!!!

Luscombe, C-140, Chief, taylorcraft all with tested tryed and true engines. Flying safely for decades with billions of hours. The folding wing thing is a farse. Your plane needs to be at the airport ready to go. When you get an extra hour, you go fly. Its hard enough to find time to fly without dragging it to the airport and assembling it. One hour a week is only 52 hours a year. Thats barely enough to keep a pilot proficient. Parts are available from AC Spruce, wag, and several other sources. They hold their value if you don't tear it up and even if you do you can get the bulk of your money out of the parts. My two cents

buck_justice wrote:Luscombe, C-140, Chief, taylorcraft all with tested tryed and true engines. Flying safely for decades with billions of hours. The folding wing thing is a farse. Your plane needs to be at the airport ready to go. When you get an extra hour, you go fly. Its hard enough to find time to fly without dragging it to the airport and assembling it. One hour a week is only 52 hours a year. Thats barely enough to keep a pilot proficient. Parts are available from AC Spruce, wag, and several other sources. They hold their value if you don't tear it up and even if you do you can get the bulk of your money out of the parts. My two cents

No so sure about that. It takes me 15 minutes to get off the trailer and into the air with my Avid. The folding wing makes it oh so easy to bring home and store it / work on it in the garage. Hangars start at 700 mo around here for just a roof over the plane... There is a SIGNIFICANT savings on Exp aircraft parts too!

If you only fly 52 hrs a year, your way better off renting than owning!

The postings on this site shattered many of my distorted stereo typical views on flying. Soloed at a Cessna Pilot Center in Scottsdale, AZ, circa 1978. Great flying but, branding was the only game then for me.

There is more out there than a "Cub or a "C180" (both ARE good airplanes obviously). I have a lot to learn still, hopefully not the hard way.

Folding wings seem to have a good loyal following, I like the idea. Especially in rural areas with no infrastructure. Birds fold their wings... Maybe that's natures clue to us?

The folding wing is still alive and well. Some fold better than others. The Kitfox/Avids, Kolbs and Highlanders are easy one man operations that take minutes to do. As are the Ridge Runners and Sky Raiders. The Rans... well, not so easy. You can get a folding wing in a Stits Playboy if you just have to have a heavy old school engine like a Conti, Lyc. or a Franklin. The Rotax 912/914 is also a tried and true aircraft specific design that has been around for decades. There's a reason they are the overwhelming choice for light experimentals.
The Camps are great planes but the payload is limited and the bigger engine ones are usually over 30K for a decent one.

EZFlap wrote: The Zenair 701/750 might be a good choice for a few reasons. ......The airplanes are able to be used on wheels, skiis, floats with minimal modifications, and Zenair offers a float kit designed for them
If and when you do get to the "extreme" end of the STOL operations spectrum, you can convert them to tailwheel configuration and great big bush tires.
If you are on a tight budget you can scratch build and save money at the expense of time
If you have a reasonable amount of money you can buy a 400 hour quick build kit............

I have seen quite a few Z701's, live & in photos, and have never seen one configured with tailwheel gear. Ditto the Savannah which seems to be a Z701 knock-off with a few small changes (VG's instead of slats, etc). I have heard of the Pegazair which is apparently a modification of the Z701 design on tailwheel gear, but I have seen exactly one Pegazair photo and it appeared to be ginned up using photoshop and not a photograph of an actual completed airplane.
As far as building an airplane...I see that suggested pretty often when someone asks about what airplane they should get. Building an airplane, even a "400 hour quick build kit", is a huge undertaking and IMHO is much more daunting than learning to fly or buying your first airplane. For the average guy / first time builder with the usual job- & family-related demands on his time, even a 400-hour kit is gonna take at least a year and there is a pretty good chance it will never get finished. I would always recommend that someone's first airplane be bought ready-to-fly.
There's plenty of nice airplanes out there meeting the OP's parameters. Just a matter of flying enough of them to make an intelligent decision.

hotrod150 wrote: I have seen quite a few Z701's, live & in photos, and have never seen one configured with tailwheel gear.

I saw a photo of a tailwheel Zenith CH701 once. It was not flattering to the little bird. The Zeniths are pretty cool looking in my opinion in their trike form, in the way that a jeep is cool looking. The raised high tail just doesn't look good on the ground.

8GCBC wrote:DO NOT give yourself a timeframe for purchasing an aircraft with your limited experience!

SAME as I suggest to others hoping to ocean sail ...crew for at least two years and watch others spend money at an alarming rate. Then decide which boat is best.

Keep your head in the search but, keep it an open end project. You may find an excellent value tomorrow but, you may not either.

Good advice, also for the marine reference to new cruisers. Are you on the Cruiser's Forum?

To the OP, I also come from hang gliders and ultralights. Funny how the two of us from similar backgrounds are gravitating to STOL and air camping. I'm thinking of a CH 701 or 750.

I would stay away from the larger framed Zenair CH series aircraft. We owned and operated a CH-801 for abou three years. It was quirky beyond belief. The only thing that it had going for it was the smooth running O-360 up front. The biggest handling issue was the tail wanted to stall before the wing. That 's something that can kill you much less soil your shorts. Zenith addressed this problem by designing a higher aspect ratio horizontal stab. Others, ourselves included, tried installing vortex generators on the bottom of the horizontal. Neither fix worked well enough. The big boxy wide fuselage on the 801 and 750 blanket a large portion of the tail surfaces. That effectively removes the "L" from the acronym STOL. You could not land slow because you had to keep the tail flying which required more speed . So a faster landing for control lengthened landing distances. Short takeoff was still okay due to the propwash over the tail. On top of that they are flimsy (panels vibrate and oil can), noisey, a bit delicate on the nose gear and slower than the dickens. Just an unforgettable quirky airplane all the way around. Subsequent to our ownership we had a CH-801, passing through flown by two seasoned military pilots. It was part of a gubmit' program to give a slow observer plane to Afghanistan. They stalled the tail and almost totalled the bird. I just can't fathom sitting in a big orange boxy airplane flying 80 knots over a war zone.
I can't speek to the 701 as it seems to have good reports from the field.

One of the reasons we fly is that it's fun. That's a significant issue for many on this forum, obviously. But some airplanes are a whole lot "funner" than others. The only way to find out if a particular airplane is fun enough for you is to fly one. Numbers, such as TO and landing distances, load carrying ability, etc., mean nothing if you don't enjoy flying the airplane.

As I mentioned earlier, my partnership started with a 70 Skylane, then a 79 TR182, then an 81 T210. While older Skylanes aren't as light on the controls as a 172, the difference between it and the TR182 was quite noticeable, and the truck like qualities of the T210 (plus the cost of operation) took all the fun out of flying. The numbers of the T210 are fabulous--great load hauling, lots of speed, great climb rate and high altitude capabilities, reasonably short field performance, etc.--but there is no fun factor.

When I was fortunate enough to look for an airplane that I would own by myself, no partners to annoy and be annoying, I wanted something that combined a number of characteristics:

fun to fly
easy to fly
comfortable to fly
relatively economical fuel burn
good high elevation performance with 2 aboard
capable of hauling 4 if necessary, but mostly 2 plus camping gear
easy to maintain anywhere
low time airframe with no significant accident history
IFR capable
low time engine so I wouldn't have to overhaul it soon

I did pretty well except for the last 2 items, with my 63 P172D, with 180 Lycoming conversion and CS prop. It took a bunch of bucks to make it IFR capable--new avionics, replace both the DG and AI, ultimately the altimeter also. The engine, which was low time (960 SMOH), hadn't been run much in the preceding few years, and after only 15 hours of ownership, it threw a rod. So much for reliability due to low time! While it was down for the engine, I had the electrics updated (alternator, circuit breakers instead of fuses, etc.). The custom built Lyc 360 now has about 550 hours on it. So those last 2 items, IFR capability and replacing the engine and updating the electrical system, totaled some $37,000, and since then I've added a 430W, new audio panel, and a host of other items which take up a full page, small print, making mine one of the most expensive old 172s out there.

So that's the other piece of the pie: having $30K to spend to buy the airplane, if that's the financial limit, fails to take into account the very real possibility of expensive outlays down the road. Even if you go experimental, it can't be cheap.

None of this is to discourage you--just to remind you to be realistic.

Cary

That is interesting to hear the report on the CH801. Don't see many of them but a few years ago when I was dreaming of ownership I thought it would be a cool airplane (of course having never seen one or flown one) and there were few PIREPs on it. There's something to be said for old proven designs for a first time owner I guess.

hotrod150 wrote:
I have seen quite a few Z701's, live & in photos, and have never seen one configured with tailwheel gear. Ditto the Savannah which seems to be a Z701 knock-off with a few small changes (VG's instead of slats, etc). I have heard of the Pegazair which is apparently a modification of the Z701 design on tailwheel gear, but I have seen exactly one Pegazair photo and it appeared to be ginned up using photoshop and not a photograph of an actual completed airplane.
As far as building an airplane...I see that suggested pretty often when someone asks about what airplane they should get. Building an airplane, even a "400 hour quick build kit", is a huge undertaking and IMHO is much more daunting than learning to fly or buying your first airplane. For the average guy / first time builder with the usual job- & family-related demands on his time, even a 400-hour kit is gonna take at least a year and there is a pretty good chance it will never get finished. I would always recommend that someone's first airplane be bought ready-to-fly.
There's plenty of nice airplanes out there meeting the OP's parameters. Just a matter of flying enough of them to make an intelligent decision.

ICP is making a tail wheel version of the Savannah, I think there is more info @ http://www.fly-buylsa.com



From what I know and can tell Savannah's are significantly better STOL performers, especially the older model with slats. Basically an improved version of a 701. They where designed by the same people who went different routes I believe. Having never flown both I can not say for sure. This link gets posted from time to time: http://www.stolspeed.com/id/49

I sure enjoy flying my Savannah though knock off or not.

Tyler, have you come across this article?

http://www.stolspeed.com/origins-701-savannah

Thanks for all the advice! I took a quick flight in a Diamond DA20 with a G1000 in it yesterday. Was a blast with surprising unobstructed ground view (the cabin is further forward than I'm used to in a low wing).

My main reason for a folding wing setup is hanger cost savings. Right now I spend 15-20min building my hang glider and 15-20min tearing it down every time I go to fly, and 30-50% of the time the conditions end up skunking me out of a flight anyway so I spend hours driving to the top of a mountain just to tear down and drive back home. The time associated with setup/teardown of a folding wing plane won't bother me if have that handy little feature called "power"

I've also been looking into a couple partnerships available here where I can buy a 1/4 share of a 172 that's hangered. I'm interested but I want to meet all of the other partners and get an idea of how tight the maintenance and attitudes toward maintenance are. Little concerned about sharing a craft that I'll be miles off the ground in if I don't have faith the other pilots are treating it well.

I'm planning on getting at least to my solo and then letting my opinions and ideas evolve as I chat with more pilots and instructors. Then I'll likely make a list of planes I like and buy one off that list based more on low hours and how cherry it is than the specific model.

This forum thread is just one more piece of evidence to my theory that aviation folk (powered or not) are simply good people and a crowd I can't wait to say I'm solidly a part of.

Sincerely, thank you guys.
~shane