After plenty of input here at BT and elsewhere we decided on a 182 for our family.

N5154H is a 2002 Cessna Turbo 182T. She has 1656 TTAF and 301 SFRM and SPOH. I bought it through Van Bortel in Texas. It was a seamless experience. From the time I settled on the plane to closing was less than 10 days. Fortunately, one of the mechanics I know that flies a turbo 182 had an annual cancel so I got the prebuy on short notice. The only squawks we found were the prop ice inop, which Van Bortel gave a price concession for, and the map light in the yoke was out. The plane is like new inside and out 10/10.

After we closed their pilot paid to fill it up before taking the Archer back to Texas. When I got in to preflight later the left tank read empty. After taxiing it came up, but was squirrelly in flight after being perfect on the test flight. I let Blake know and he said they will make it right. That’s service!

Here are the pics!

Inside

Closing the door. This is the best!

[youtube]https://youtu.be/TbbWfCyfMMA[/youtube]

Congratulations! Great machine.

Congrats!
Looking forward to plenty of trip reports!

Keep a sticky note on you gtn750 that says “Rudder Gust Lock!” and only peel it off if you have the gust lock in your other hand.

Beautiful well done!
There may well be something like this in our future taking Nancy’s mobility in to account.
I hear good things about Van Bortel.

Congratulations! I do love those post-restart 182s.

I always confuse Van Bortel and Tarron Bhomas. Glad to hear it went well. There are so few actual dealers anymore.

Congrats

Enjoy !!!

You can Put a Parachute in one of these Birds too, Luc

Nice 182, Congrats!!

Van Bortel is awesome and has a great reputation. The only beef folks seem to have is their prices, but to have a nearly squawk free prebuy and smooth process is worth a few extra bucks.

I hadn’t heard of the other until someone at my field mentioned them in an unflattering way.

I am paranoid about stuff like that. I remove everything including the tie downs and chocks before I unlock the plane. Then I unlock the cargo compartment and put them in. After my walk around, I check the cargo compartment again. I have heard nightmares about people forgetting things like that.

Congratulations. Looks like you have a well equipped and capable aircraft. I have 130 hours in 182"s. A real joy to fly.

Van Bortel is awesome and has a great reputation. The only beef folks seem to have is their prices, but to have a nearly squawk free prebuy and smooth process is worth a few extra bucks. .

I also got good flying in yesterday with 2 different CFIs. We were solid IMC early in the day so we did approaches with the autopilot and without. The KAP140 is decent, but no better than the Century 2000 on my Archer. It will get a GFC500 sooner rather than later.

Slow flight was nuts. With 420 lbs of pilot and copilot and full fuel, the stall pint was 52 no flaps and 34 full flaps. Steep turns require a lot more muscle and trim than the Archer, especially at 60 degrees.

The best part to me is being able to come in a little high and bring the power back and sink like a rock. That was cool. Power off 180s were easier than the Archer. I did 10-12 landings and none were nose first. A couple were flat though. The toughest part right now is waiting longer to flare. I am so paranoid about the nose gear that I am glaring early.

I had hoped to fly today but is was solid IMC with 700 foot ceilings and a crosswind. If I had an instructor, I would have done it, but I wasn’t ready for that solo yet. We will have good weather this week so I can spend time in the pattern.

I did figure out that I will need GAMIs though. I want to run LOP and it seems that just as the last cylinder goes lean I get rough running. I’ll get Up in VMC with a safety pilot to really work on it, but I estimate that I have a GAMI spread in excess of 2.5 gph. Of course this was a quick practice run, but it let me know about the injectors.