Marc Adler wrote:
"Instructor availability"? Are they that thin on the ground there?

No, instructor or aircraft availability was very rarely a problem. Not
that many people in the club were flying the Skyhawk, and for most of
the time I was a student, I was the only student in the club--so it
wasn't too hard to book the instructor.

figure includes my buy-in for a local flying club. I've not only got

Do you mean fractional ownership? (Yes, another stupid question from
the newbie...)

How does that work? If you have to pay your share of monthly expenses
(in addition to the buy-in fee), doesn't it wind up costing more than
renting if you don't fly that often?

Good questions. I ran the numbers before I started, and figured that
the cost of joining the club would be recovered in my hourly rental
rates well before I finished training--even if I never got a dime of my
equity stake back out (and under most circumstances, the equity stake
is refundable when leaving the club). There are monthly dues ($60) to
cover other expenses like insurance and tie-down fees, but in what I'm
saving relative to renting at the local flight schools, I come out
ahead if I only fly 3 hours a month. And I plan to fly more than
that!

I actually posted an ad for the flying club here, about two weeks ago.
Look for the post with "Morristown, NJ" in the title.

Gary