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In 1981 I was looking for another airplane to own. I had owned a Cessna 120 for a couple of years (1976-77) and was working on a Homebuilt (Quickie 1) at the time. I heard about an IRS auction that caused the closure of the Grumman flight school at Concord, CA. Among the office aircraft parts, and shop equipment that was to be auction was one airplane. I did some checking and found out what the flight school owed the lean holder on the plane, and called the lean holder to verify what they would take to settle the lean. The flight school had the plane for sale asking $6500.
I went over to the local IRS office to go over the log books, then decided to go to the auction and see what happened. There was quite a crowd there, and the bidding started for the flight school’s interest in the plane at like $100. I made a few bids and the bidding ended at around $400 or so. The lady from the IRS running the auction said the minimum bid they would accept was $741.59. My hand went up and said I would bid that. No one else countered and I won the day. What had scared everyone else off was the lean on the airplane had not been paid on for some time. I had checked and new what the payoff would be. I then sent the lean holder a check for $3,362.41 and Grumman N1632Romeo was mine! I had spent a total of $4,104. I think I had some $6500 in cash to my name at the time and no credit or credit cards.
The Bumble Bee (that I quickly named it) was a basic trainer with a Narco Escort 110 radio and had about 1800 hours TT. I had had a few rides in AA-1’s, but never logged any time in them, so I looked to get checked out in it. In those days, the insurance company was fine with me flying without any previous time in type, but I wanted some time with an instructor.
Friend Bob who had done some instructing in the original AA-1 Yankee said he would fly with me, so on October 18th, 1981 he gave me .7 hours of dual.
I now live in Independence, OR, and the Bumble Bee now sports a 0-320 in it that I installed in 1983 and a few more avionics. My friend Bob lives in Bend, OR. Bob recently had to sell his F-33C Aerobatic Bonanza that he owned for some 45+ years. But if he is up to it, I plan to fly over on October 18th and give him a ride in the plane he checked me out 40 years prior… -
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That’s a great story! I recently came across some photos of my original flight training in an AA-1B in ’76 … what a flashback!
(Looking at your photo is seems our aircraft came off the production line at about the same time … yours is N1632R, mine was N1623R!)
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I remember the first time I fired up the Bumble Bee 40 years ago) after buying it. After some 30 seconds I was not seeing any oil pressure so I shut it down. Now the plane had sat for several weeks with out running, so I expected some delay but I thought I had a major problem after a 30 second run.
A friend came over the next day and we fired it up again. He rapped hard on the panel, and the gage shot up into the green. I felt a huge sigh of relief. We taxied over to my new tiedown and shut it down. The next day the gage was still showing in the green. Taking it apart, the gage needle was rubbing hard enough against the face to cause it to stick. After fixing that (bending the needle), the same gage is still working fine in the plane today. How did this pass muster being a flight school plane? -
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