Sold.

We've sold N620CP, and tomorrow the new owner will arrive in Minneapolis to take it to its new home in California. We've had this plane longer than our kids, and it feels a little like a member of the family.

Ironically, today I'm traveling to New York and changing planes at Chicago Midway, an airport I've flown 620CP into a couple times. On approach, I couldn't help but think how I'd much rather be up front than looking at the same approach from the little side window.

We bought N620CP in 1996 from a farmer in central Illinois, where we lived at the time. The prior owner used it mainly for short local flights in the summer, and had taken good mechanical care, but had not invested anything in the cosmetics. Immediately after buying the plane, we invested $30,000 on badly needed upgrades to the paint, interior, and avionics. The autopilot didn't work when we bought it, and we never felt strongly enough about it to get fixed. We also renumbered it: the old number was 181CR, and the new number combines our wedding date and initials.

In the fall of 1996, I took a job in Minneapolis, and was using 620CP to commute between Champaign, IL and Minneapolis weekly for several months. At that time, we added a Stormscope and HSI to better suit the mission of regular cross-country trips, often IMC for much of the flight.

She Who Puts Up With Me joined me in Minneapolis in late 1996, and started flying 620CP back to Champaign regularly until her obligations there were finished in mid-1997.

We've taken 620CP on a number of memorable trips, including Great Falls, Orlando, and New York. Flights to Grand Marais, MN, at the very northeast corner of the state, have been common. Unfortunately, after the birth of Scooter in 1999, and the twins in 2002, our time for flying plummeted. Selling the plane was not an easy decision, but was the only thing that made sense.

During the time we've owned this plane, it has been exceptionally reliable. We've only had to cancel one flight for mechanical reasons, when the vacuum pump failed before takeoff. It is a very nice IFR plane, and trims out almost perfectly. One of the reasons we never fixed the autopilot is we never missed it, with how well the plane flies hands-off. Three hours of hand-flying in IMC never seemed like any kind of burden.

Like any airplane older than most college students, there are one or two quirks. The two we've experienced are both very minor. One is that the stormscope is very sensitive to electrical noise from inside the plane. This manifests itself as a very tight cluster of strikes which always appears at the same spot relative to the aircraft heading. This normally appears during times of high electrical load: when the battery is charging right after takeoff, and when you turn on something which sucks a lot of power (like the pitot heat). Fortunately it is very easy to distinguish this noise from real weather. I have a hunch that replacing the alternator (should that ever become necessary) would fix this.

The other quirk is that the wingtip landing lights induce a small (under 10 degrees) error in the HSI when they're turned on. The nose landing light does not exhibit this behavior. I suspect this is because the wires for the wingtip lights are routed too close to the remote flux gate, but our attempts to get this corrected have been unsuccessful.

As with any old friend, I hope that we've not seen the last of N620CP. But I know it has a good home, and I hope the new owner will enjoy it as much as we have.