Hi Roland,
> Hi all! I'm interested in buying a Europa XS Trigear. I have the
> opportunity to keep it at home. Since the factory advertises it as no
> problem, rigging the aircraft within 5 Minutes and drive home with
> it, this is really an issue to reduce the running costs. Onother
> advantage would be the possibility to fill up the tank at the filling
> station much cheaper and do maintanance at home.
These were exactly our (me and wife) considerations. Although we are not
yet flying, we are already very customed to rig the airplane (for
various purposes during the build process). Rigging can easily be done
within 5 minutes, provided you take care during the build. Especially
important is it to make sure the pip-pins go in smouthly, and to make
the proper wing spar guides.
We estimate that the overhead in time of keeping the airplane at home is
very small. We have to drive to the airport anyway, with or without
plane. If the plane would be kept at the airport, we would most likely
loose a lot of time by shuffling around other airplanes so ours could
get out. Also, filling up the tanks would be faster at the local gas
station (on the way to the airport) rather than doing this at the
airport (with an additional start- and shut-down sequence, additional
paperwork), provided they have mogas at all.
Also, doing maintenance at home (where all the tools are kept) will be
much faster than to do it at an airport, where you have to carefully
estimate which tools you need to bring from home, probably forget
something, and have to drive quite a lot between airport and home.
Another advantage is that we can easily decide to take off from another
airport, in case our default airport is covered in clouds.
The possibility to keep the airplane at home was one of the main reasons
we choosed to build an Europa.
--
Frans Veldman
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