Purchase Budget and Ownership
 

I am interested in buying a 337 to fly the Caribbean for two months this coming summer (as a start and reason to finally do it). Thereafter I will use the plane to fly mostly the east coast from FL to ME and use it for some aerial photography work (which will help pay the bills).

From what I have seen it looks like I can buy a clean mid time plane for around $100,000. Which translates into around $2,000 a month for the loan. Insurance should cost me around $300-350 a month (I have new commercial multi and 1,000 hours military jet time as a right seater). I'm headed to my local field Venice, FL to check out tie-down rates today. $80 an hour or so in fuel. Set asides another $125 an hour?

I'm trying to get at a good rough number here. I know very well this is based on a clean airplane and even after that things can crop up. I'm okay with that.

I'm also not sure on the exact year and config I want/need. I like the P but need to be able to open the windows to do aerial photography and video. I would also like the six seat config as best as possible as we would fly four adults and my two kids (11 and 12 so they could take the rear smaller seats). The belly pod for luggage would be great. I could offload some fuel to make this happen I suppose. STOL would be nice in some of the smaller Carib airfields as well.

So can anyone comment on any or all of the questions I pose here? Is there another source/website/book I can acquire to further my education on this matter. I am serious about getting this done. As it will be my first plane and my wife is aboard I wouldn't want to screw it up and sour the expereince towards my ultimate goal of a Super Skyrocker one day.

Thank you in advance.

If you want to open the windows, you need to get a Pre-73 Skymaster. The reason I say this, is that you would need an 0-2 type door/window. For the normal Skymaster, you need to be going pretty slow to open the window. With the 0-2 door, the window actually cranks out horizontally, and can be flown with it open at slightly higher speeds. Get one of those, and you can lean out the window and take all the pictures you want. I have seen this on Paul and Mary's Skymaster, and it is really cool. I also saw them at Don Neiser's place. You can get a new door, with the crank out window, and fit it to your pre-73 skymaster.

Insurance is lump sum, all up front, and will be expensive first year. How expensive, I don't know, but ask Scott Smith www.skysmith.com . I would expect somewhere around 4K per year.

If it didn't come from the factory with a cargo pod, you can buy them from Owen Bell, drill the holes, and install it. Paul did that and can share some information on it.


Come to the Bahamas fly-in in May. You will get to see some folks, get more information, and you can get your wife to ride in one.

Thanks for the input. I'll follow up on your points and will keep learning.