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Fabric Life and Recover- So confused.

Bought a 1948 ragwing 170 when I was 19 years old for $4500 which was more money than I’d ever seen before. Helped a friend build a lodge for a few gifts he bought me.. Last flight with the Goodyear brakes, landed on what was runway 33 at Merrill, and the right brake was so bad I had to do a left 270 to exit the runway.. Tower though that was pretty funny! Last flight before we finally overhauled the engine, had to use the primer to keep it running on takeoff from the gravel bar by the lodge. Can’t remember the name of the guy that ran the shop at Sea Airmotive, but when I dropped the accessories off for overhaul he looked the carb over for about 30 seconds, looked at me and threw it in a garbage can! But god I loved that airplane!
 
I'd say go for it. Take a long and hard look at the covering and the rest of the plane and determine if it's safe to fly in. Just because the covering is old doesn't mean it's bad. Besides the materials used, the workmanship and storage plays a huge part like others have said and this one sounds well hangared and taken care of. One thing to think about is future appreciation of the aircraft over the long term if you plan to keep it that long. The plane sounds like a J3 (the best Piper imo) which are a collectors aircraft and hold their value very well. Those same planes were going for $20k less than a decade ago and are now in the $40k range. With inflation and prices all going up you can plan on a good bit of appreciation from inflation as well as simply appreciation based on a limited number being produced and fewer on the registry every year. Even if you have to recover/rebuild the plane in 5-10 years time you've gotten a lot of use out of it and when you get on the other side of the rebuild you will have learned a lot about small plane maintenance and also have a beautiful little showpiece plane that will be worth quite a bit of money.

But that's just my opinion based on having bought a pretty ratty J3 and going down this road. It's great fun putting the work and time into getting your own plane "just so" and being that owner that really took care of your plane. Old aircraft are a long story of good and bad ownership and you get to put your name in the logbooks as one of the good guys that was a loving caretaker of a vintage aircraft. The best part is climbing out of your little yellow bird at the end of a flight and just standing there admiring such a dandy little plane. You'll always find a way to make the money work with a plane like that.
 
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