Reply To: Engine Rebuild Fund

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#9636
John LincolnJohn Lincoln
Participant

    This topic has generated a lot of interest. I was originally in favor of Don’s proposal and I think it is certainly one avenue we must consider. I also want to thank Don for bringing it up and proposing his solution. We need this discussion. That said I think we should also consider all the other possible methods of generating the funds.

    Interest rates are low right now and look to stay that way for a while. A loan makes sense. I’m retired and look at loans as a bad thing, but when I was younger they were a tool to get and hold the assets I needed and or wanted at the time. The club is NOT in the retirement stage of existence so we most definitely should consider using borrowed funds.

    The Pawnee also isn’t at TBO yet. It looks like we should get in one more season before we get there. As far as I know it has been running good so far this year. I plan to work with Larry and Gary to check the compression to try to ascertain (to the extent we can) the health of the engine. If it checks out OK I believe we can expect to get one more season out of it before the overhaul. And if that’s the case we could add a fee to the cost of tows next year that is specifically for the overhaul fund. This is also entirely fair in my opinion because the pilots towing behind the Pawnee are the ones contributing to the overhaul fund. Based on the number of tows given this year the add on would be around $26.00 per tow to cover the entire short fall as of now. Obviously we wouldn’t add that much on so while it wouldn’t cover the entire cost it will get us closer to the number needed. (As a separate issue (but definitely tied to this issue) is weather or not we wish to overhaul this winter or not. We did 95% of our flying this year behind the Pawnee. If it goes down we will be extremely limited. Something to think about.)

    Also our old method, asking one or more members to loan the club the cash, is also a viable way to cover the short fall we have right now. I know of a couple members right now who are willing to do just this.

    Finally there may be other ways to finance the overhaul that I haven’t considered or know about.

    Sincerely,

    John Lincoln