When I started leaning how to fly, my wife said, "Great, now he's going to want to buy a plane!" So, the deal I her was that I would not buy a plane until after I got my commercial pilots certificate, which she thought would never happen. Well, it did happen in February 2006. So, I started looking.

I had initially been looking for a Grumman Cheetah or Tiger, but after I did my research I decided that a better choice would be a common Cessna or Piper, primarily because of better availability of parts, service centers, etc. Knowing that I could only spend about $40-50 thousand on this dream of mine, I began to get depressed about my prospects. Most IFR certified aircraft with low time and in good condition were well above my price range, until I found a 1968 Cessna 177 Cardinal, N3212T, and it had just had been painted and redone inside and out, only had 2000 hours on the airframe, and the engine had less than 50 hours since overhaul. My only concern was that the overhaul was in 1998, so it had been flying only about 7 hours a year on average.

All in all it was a good plane at a great price, so I bought it.

Panel Modifications
After I got it home, I started some upgrades to the Panel. It immediately needed a new audio panel and I wanted the out dated and broken equipment out, so the ADF and LORAN had to go.

The first year, the only real problems I had were with the mixture cable, and a couple of fuel leaks. The first leak was in the wing tank quick drain. As it turns out, the fuel boss that the quick drain screws into was stripped, and the fuel was seeping out through the stripped threads. The second problem was with the o-rings in the fuel selector valve. It had apparently been leaking for a long time. I'm not sure how that was missed in the annual done with the pre-buy inspection.

The First Annual - Although I had a few issues in the first year that were pretty minor, the first real annual was a eye opener.