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Hi Steve G....
Thanks for your response. Yes, Richard Collins did scrap his beloved P210 N40RC after 28 years and hung the control yoke on his wall in memory of his airplane, if my memory is recalling the story correctly. I think he flew the airplane to Griffin, GA (6A2) if the internet is telling the truth for it's final flight and scrapping. I'm uncertain at this time if there is still a scrap yard there or exactly how his process worked. That is on my "to do" list to attempt to figure that out. Richard has always been my pilot hero, as I'm sure he has been for many. I think/hope I've read everything he has written. I consider myself a fraction of 1% of the pilot he was. Richard's choice to do what he did with his airplane always sounded like a rather cool way to end airplane ownership. He is the inspiration for my thought to retire my airplane.
As I mentioned, losing access to my forever IA (he's now 70 and been here since he was 16) and access to maintenance at my home airport is causing my consideration to retire from airplane ownership. I've been incredibly fortunate over the past 30-ish years and 22 years of C337 ownership.
I admittedly am struggling a little with taking a very serviceable airplane and retiring it. I am trying to decide if that is slightly selfish or not. It is a consideration, however I am in the fortunate position of not needing to sell the airplane. If I were to turn the airplane over to a new caretaker, I would be "interviewing" this person as much as he/she should be interviewing me and inspecting the airplane prior to taking possession. I would not hand it over to anyone I did not feel was qualified and has a realistic expectation of what C337 ownership entails. Truthfully though, searching for this person is not on my priority list of things to do.
Anyway, I am still interested in hearing anyone's personal experience or knowledge in scrapping an airplane. Taking the airplane to Colorado or Georgia is likely possible (assuming it survives this in process annual inspection) though admittedly I'm hoping to find something a little closer to Chicago.
Thanks again for the responses.
Ed
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