Sad day for a great pacer!

[SClow303]

My friend has been looking for a good pacer with some "bush" mods for quite some time. a couple weeks ago we noticed that a plane that a friend of mine and his wife owned for several years was now up for sale and only 10 miles away from us! We went and looked it over and it was a beautiful aircraft. Nice panel with decent radios and late model instruments with nice paint and interior. What made the plane really nice was for $24,900 it has a lot of great STC's. Big, tires, VG's, wing tips, PA 18 tail, etc. Well... My friend goes ahead and secures the loan and gets the insurance all set up and ready to go. This past Sunday morning he met with the current owner for a little flight and then to sit down and get the deal done. After about 30 minutes of flying and falling in love with it we was hooked. Now my friend has about one hour tail wheel time. He flew it back to the airport and the owner took over for the landing while my friend stayed on with him. I guess they were a little hot and bounced it but the owner said it did not feel like it was out of control at all.... well, it went right, left and back to the right off into the muddy grass and ground looped. It bent the tail section to the right approx 20 degrees and rotated it about 30 degrees. The tail feathers on the left side are bent up about 20 degrees about a foot from the tip. The left wing is bent up and rotated about 3 foot from the tip. The gear and wing attach points "appear" to be in good shape. Luckily no prop strike. He is currently awaiting the insurance adjuster to stop by and look at it. He asked if it gets totaled and he does not want it if I am interested in buying it. Depending on the price they want I would defintely be interested but there is a long road of work ahead for it to fly again. I will try and snap some pics of it in the current state. I feel bad. The owner is a super nice guy and my friend finally thought that he had found his dream plane.

00011477587093.43.jpg n6157d_2.JPG 00001477587092.64.jpg

[Gilbert Pierce]

Whose insurance is paying. Seller or purchaser? With one hour of tail wheel my guess is the buyers insurance my not apply.

[SClow303]

Well.... since the deal was pending this flight and the current owner was on the controls his insurance is handling it. I was really excited to have this aircraft coming to my hanger to live for awhile.

[alaskadrifter]

Bummer, that was a good price too.

[forkzilla]

Was this the Pacer based at Ashland, Ohio?

[Old3pacer]

Earlier this week have seen some pretty squirrelly winds! I know of a chief that landed hard and bent airframe and wing tips - I think it was Monday. No prop strike. Let us know how this turns out
AL

[Pacer42Z]

It sounds like it suffered some serious airframe damage. That would be difficult to repair. It was a nice looking Pacer, too bad. What size are the tires? They look very proportional. Not too big, but not as small as the 6.00X6 look.

Juergen
Pacer N3342Z

[SClow303]

Yeap, this was in Ashland, Ohio. The tires are 8.50 X 6’s. It sat perfectly. I think there are a couple of options for rebuilding it. If it were to be kept stock the easiest way would be to find a donor aircraft with another fuselage. The other option would be to pick it up with the intentions of doing the full certified bushmaster mod and find a donor rear end. It will be hard to access damage until it is opened up. It was such a nice plane and my friends who owned it really flew it in and out of some crazy places. There are a lot of videos with the Ohio Bush Planes and this aircraft.


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[Subsonic]

I wonder if they say the same thing about tail wheel pilots as they do about motorcyclists? Goes like this: "There are two categories of tail-dragger pilots: those that have ground looped (crashed), and those that will..." I say, don't take it (crashing) too serious and get on down the road to rebuilding it. Everyone lived, right? Smile. There's a $2800 TP out there right now. I wish I was closer, I might buy it just to peck away at it as a project with no rush.

[SClow303]

I thought about going to look at that TP this week. I would like to have another set of wings to take apart and rebuild.


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