"KayInPA" wrote in message
...

with the secondary goal being the freedom to go further away and for
longer stretches of time than our FBO allows. I think an IFR 172 fits

Does your FBO actually have a limit on how far away you can take the
airplane in miles? That would be quite odd and would seem to defeat the
point of flying.

If the problem instead is that the FBO has a minimum number of hours for a
daily rental, then I suspect that even if you took the airplane for a week
at a time occasionally with say a 3-hour daily minimum, you still would come
out way, way ahead financially compared with owning your airplane.

Not only that, but if you are known to the FBO as a responsible renter and
frequent customer, I suspect you might well be able to negotiate more
flexible cross-country rental terms than the official terms offered to the
public.

In my mind these are the reasons to buy an airplane:

(1) You fly so many trips that you frequently run into scheduling conflicts
with your local rental airplanes

(2) You plan to fly IFR and cannot locate a rental airplane equipped with
the redundant equipment you prefer for those flights, i.e. backup vacuum
pump or electric AI

(3) You have concerns about the maintenance of the locally available rental
airplanes

(4) You wish to fly an airplane type or class which is not practically
available for rental, i.e. a high performance complex airplane

(5) Pride of ownership -- this is fine on its own as a rationalization as
long as you realize you will pay SUBSTANTIALLY more money to own an airplane
similarly equipped as one you can rent


--
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com