"David Megginson" wrote in message
.rogers.com...
Louis L. Perley III wrote:

This wasn't a rental, I own this C152, so today I'll be heading back
to
the airport with some Febreeze. Whoever came up with that stuff is a
genius!. Overall it mainly stayed in the carseat, so it wasn't as messy
as I
feared it would be. It was one of the rare occasions when I was grateful
to
have a plane made in the '70s complete with orange seats and carpeting
which
will make any stains that much harder to spot.

First, congrats on your first passenger.

Beyond cleaning up messes, you'll find lots more reasons to be glad about
owning an inexpensive, older plane over the next few years. Of course,
you'll be down to driving speed (or worse) with a headwind, and I'm sure
you've already heard the joke about the Airworthiness Directive for
150/152's requiring you to reinforce the tail against bird strikes, but
when
you're paying US $10-15/hour for gas, I bet that you'll be flying a lot
while the gas-guzzling twins and high-performance singles are just sitting
on the ramp (fuel-efficient Mooneys excepted, of course).

You'll probably also love your $500-$1,000 annuals, low insurance costs,
and
the total lack of any temptation to go out and spend $20-30K to put in a
new
leather interior or a Garmin stack. You also won't always be hovering
around fretting that the line guy is going to scratch your perfect paint
with the tractor or gas nozzle.


All the best,


David

This is exactly why I bought a C152 early in my training. I was doing
some calculations and wondered where all the cost of renting came from. Once
I calculated that I found that I could buy a decent bird for around ~25,000
and after that, as you say about the only hourly cost is fuel and oil.
Insurance and Annuals are once a year events that you just suck up and pay.
Simple airplane = simple maintenance and low-cost insurance so that too
keeps costs low. Since a C152 isn't really overpowered for the altitudes I
fly (BJC is 5500 ft) it would also force me to learn how to manage my power
and such much more carefully than if I flew a plane that I could just power
my way out of a problem (although I must admit when I fly the new 172SP I
love the way they seem to leap off the runway compared to what I fly, yes,
it's true what they say, you always want something bigger, faster, etc.) The
plan was to take my checkride in this particular airplane, but I also
quickly learned the hard part of being an owner when my engine started
making metal large enough to punch holes in the paper oil filter. I was
grounded two weeks before my checkride, which was taken in a rental. It took
me awhile due to outside activities to come up with money for a new engine,
but now that I've put her back together, it's like you said. I look outside,
weather is acceptable (and I've done everything on the honeydo list), I'll
go fly. Even with gas prices pretty high, it only cost me $20/hr. to fly,
excluding fixed costs. Those fixed costs I don't ever really figure into my
equation, because they come due regardless of how much I fly and compared to
club dues if I were renting, that pretty much covers insurance, and much the
same those dues would be paid monthly regardless of the amount I rented.
Annuals are a non-event costing $500 or so if I take the time to open up the
plane myself.
Jay Honeck is correct, we need to be better at spreading the word at how
low-cost flying can be. Sure I won't ever do significant business travel
with a C152, then again you can't spin a King Air. Aviation has it's trade
offs. If you can afford a new car (and really even if you can't), you can
get an airplane and really go somewhere. Since I now have two children, I
will eventually need a larger plane, but I don't think I could ever sell
N46000, it's just too much fun! I've now put in some additional avionics and
such, just here and there when money was available, so now I have an
airplane that is IFR capable, once I have the instrument checkride
completed, I'll have a low-cost way to maintain my currency.

--
Louis L. Perley III
N46000