How to Buy a Single-Engine Airplane (Illustrated Buyer's Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Help choosing the right aircraft
Review: For many of us, shopping for our first airplane is something of an alien experience. Since the average age of the private aircraft is over 20 years old, there are many considerations, and it is easy to second guess yourself. To help with my journey on the road to finding the perfect first aircraft, I purchased almost every book I could find on the subject. Scott Smith's book was one of the many.

This six chapter, 126-page book contains many black in white photographs. While this text will not teach you everything you need to know about buying an aircraft, but it does feature photographs of various aircraft, covers cost, hidden costs, and will help you to narrow your search to the right kind of aircraft for you.

Rating:
Summary: Techie- Nut's take on How to Buy a Single-engine Airplane
Review: I was so excited to receive this book that I sat down with it and read it through the night it arrived. Scott Smith writes a handy and very readable guideline.

Smith's first chapter on selecting the right aircraft includes the elements that most of us would include in an aircraft search: one that matches our piloting abilities, the most frequent ways the craft will be used and the ever popular cost considerations. Then he takes it a step further and adds the personality type of the prospective buyer. Image is a key element that a salesperson would try to pick up on but one that might easily be left out of a self-directed search.

Like the chapter on selection, the ones with before you buy considerations and what to ask are chock full of practical hints and technical advice. Let's face it, though, I bought the book for its listings on the various aircraft. Smith has broken these into Two-seat simple, four-seat simple and four & Six seat high performance aircraft. Each chapter features alphabetically organized listings with photos, short bios and data charts on each craft - a Techie's dream.

There-in lies the only two beefs I have with this book. Although How to Buy is loaded with photos, they are all black & white, which in itself is not bad but, many of these are poor quality images lacking contrast or with distracting backgrounds. This detracts somewhat from the otherwise outstanding utility of this guide.

The only other complaint is the omission of a couple key examples of one of the categories. Granted there are hundreds of crafts that might have made the pages of this book but, it is not possible to represent the field of high-performance single-engine aircraft when omitting two key players that for many define the category: Beech's Bonanza and Debonair.

For some, that omission alone may be enough to take a pass but I say buy this book for all it does contain.