12 For Sale in Michigan

Just thought I would throw this out there to see if anyone else has talked to this guy. There was a 12 listed on Barnstormers.com only once several weeks ago. The plane was a complete restoration with a mid time engine and was in Michigan. I spoke with the owner? Who lived in Louisiana, who told me that it was a ground up restoration. New fabric, fuselage was bead blasted and painted, wings looked like new inside. Overall stock otherwise. Then the fellow tells me that the plane has never been flown, he had some sort of accident and wasn't able to fly it. When I asked if I could talk to the IA that supervised the rebuild I never got a response nor did I ever get a scan of the log book entry. Next I asked for the registration number so I could check for liens and he couldn't remember the N number (started to get that uneasy feeling) I wanted to go up and do an inspection with the IA but couldn't get the fellow to commit, but he would have the IA call me-which he didn't. When I asked him if we were going to be able to fly the plane he said no, had to pay for the plane then when I went to fly it if it need rigging or that sort of thing he would take care of it. Something just doesn't smell right here so I walked away. Might of been a mistake but I decided to walk.

Quite the opposite, you did exactly the right thing. The 12 is kind of an odd fish and there are a lot of hokey ones out there. It's amazing how many have just been "completely restored" and are now up for sale. That makes little sense because you'll never get your money out of a 12 doing that. More likely it was getting ratty and need some fresh skin and paint to make it marketable. Building a nice 12 has to be a labor of love because it'll never pencil out at resale time. I built a really nice one about 4 years ago and it was hugely expensive, but I plan to keep it for the remainder of my flying years.

Had a friend look at this airplane. His advise was don't take it to a flyin. In other words, stay away!