Neal wrote in message . ..
In a very rare, unordinary situation, you might find that the A&P who
had been servicing the aircraft all along to be a good one for the
prepurchase.

Not as rare as you would think. A lot is going to depend on exactly
what aircraft you are looking at. Something that is very common, such
as the 150/152/172 series or the Cherokees', there are hundreds of
people that can and do work on them. When you start talking about
rare/antique/warbirds, you really narrow the field of people that are
qualified to work on them. With these aircraft, I'd rather go through
them with the person that has been doing the maintenance instead of
handing the aircraft to someone that is qualified on paper, but has
little or no practical experience with the model in question. A
pre-buy inspection is no place to spend your bucks paying for a
mechanic to get trained on a particular model. You leave yourself open
to possible problems down the road with overlooked items due to
excessive familarity, but you will find that those type mechanics
quickly earn a bad rep in the trade.

Craig C.