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To Trade or Not to Trade by Kevin Ware
For the past 20 years, I have owned the same airplane: a 1979 RTSOL RAM VII Cessna 340A. From time to time, there is a maintenance event, artful advertising from a
manufacturer or colorful photos in one of the aircraft sales magazines that makes me wonder, “Maybe I should change to a different airplane.” This thinking then spins off a series of questions and calculations regarding the potential prospect. So, I pick up the latest Controller at the FBO and leave it in a handy place around the house to peruse – feeling somewhat guilty while doing so, given a certain sense of loyalty to the faithful C340.
Certain events tend to trigger this thinking more than others. For example, my C340 recently went through its an- nual inspection and in addition to the usual relatively minor problems, there was a problem noted by another pilot who f lies it: The cabin would not maintain rated pressure up to the airplane’s ceiling of 25,000 feet. This precipitated a week-long period of very expensive leak chasing, which (among other things) revealed the plugs for the drain holes in the bottom of the fuselage were 40 years old and lost their flexibility.
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Once those were fixed, it was discovered there was a leak in one of the boots that goes around the gear retraction mechanism as it exits the fuselage. The boot was 40 years old, made of some rubber cloth material, and upon exam- ining it, I was amazed it had lasted that long. Even though only one was leaking, the mechanics decided they should replace them on both sides. This made sense to me, but it was a nasty job that took hours and hours of the mechanics’ $150/hour time. After everything was fixed, I was asked to test fly the airplane.
Once airborne, the pressurization system worked well, maintaining a sea-level cabin until passing about 8,000 feet. A loud roar then began somewhere in the nose section, and the cabin started climbing with the airplane. To complicate things further, the rate control knob on the pressure con- troller refused to vary cabin rate change at all. So, back to the maintenance hangar and more head scratching. A rate controller from another aircraft was borrowed and another test flight was made – with the same outcome. Back again