Selling a 1955 Tripacer

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            This may seem like a really strange place to start a strand of blogs on aviation… selling a plane seems like it should be the last post rather than the first.  However, we have had our beloved little Tripacer for 6 years, I earned my license in it, it helped us move a bunch of our stuff from Galena to Unalakleet (300 pounds at a time), moved our oldest girl to college (that sure looked like more than 300 pounds of stuff heading to the dorm room) and it is about time for something different.

(Romay on her way to college)

            I have to admit, I love the little plane.  Though they are often teased, flying milk stool, glides like a brick, etc., there is a bond that I seem to develop with even the humblest of machines.  And really, how humble is a machine that can take my rear from sitting on the ground to cruising at 100 knots a couple thousand feet above it?

            Tripacers are solid.  Piper built them very much the same way they built their family of cubs.  It is a welded steel tube skeleton encased in a cloth skin.  That frame can take some abuse and is very forgiving at the hands of a rookie pilot.

            Though the first Pacers and Tripacers were somewhat underpowered, with a Lycoming O-320 150 horse engine, ours performs pretty well.  It gets off of Unalakleet’s short (1900’) crosswind runway fully loaded without breaking a sweat or causing the pilot’s blood pressure to go up.  Packing light is not something my mother-in-law has ever been good at and it was comical to see her bags packed to the ceiling in the seat next to her little 80-some-year-old frame.

            Maybe it is for those reasons that so many pilots have earned their wings flying Tripacers.  While working on my license, I had the cool experience of sharing a runway with multiple Firebosses and Superscoopers who were in the area fighting Alaskan wildfires.  Many of their pilots had learned to fly in Tripacers and they would come to admire my family’s little plane while sharing memories and stories of their old planes.  The little “milk stool” definitely was not the prettiest plane there, but pilots would walk past the silver, polished 170 gleaming in the sun parked next to her to come take a look at the yellow and brown interior of the little Piper.

            When we bought the plane, my wife and I were both working on furthering our education, had a daughter who would soon be heading to college, and money was tight.  A Tripacer seemed to be the perfectly priced plane to get us into aviation.  And, it treated us well and served that mission.

(Out on a date)

            Our degrees have helped us move up, our older girl is not in college anymore, and though I would never say we are flush, our airplane purchasing budget (after the hopeful future sale of the Tripacer) is a little healthier than the first time around.

            The task at hand is to find a good home for our first plane.  It is our hope that it helps many more generations of aspiring aviators earn their wings.