Out of curiosity, do you own a plane, JLA?
Often, small airplanes are jointly owned by 2 or 3 or 4 owners to defray costs.
Unless you want exclusive use of the aircraft and having it available to you at all times, it usually works to share availability and cost with a few others.
Using whatever method of dividing ownership and usage percentages that they want to, a group of individuals buy a share of ownership of the aircraft, then they will agree to a maintenance schedule and equitably divide expenses. This allows many people an opportunity to share in a hobby that may otherwise be prohibitively expensive for any one of them.
Everybody always wants to blame the Mexicans.
Not yet. 
As others have said, it’s about choices. Right now I have a mortgage and a car payment, and I’m still paying for a home improvement. Plus I have a lot of ‘toys’. If I get a plane I want to use it for moderate-distance trips. A Cessna 150/152 is too slow and I’d have to fly with partial tanks if I have a passenger. A Long-EZ is fast, but who built it? (Although it would be fun to point out ‘This is the same kind of plane John Denver was killed in!’) Fifties-era Bonanzas are fast and fairly inexpensive, but high-upkeep. So it comes down to a Skyhawk or a PA-28 or AA-5 style of thing. I like the Skyhawk. (The Grumman is nice too, but I just like the Skyhawk.) I make just about the average wage and my credit is good. I’m sure I could get a loan for a mid-'70s 172. But with about $80,000 debt already I’ll have to wait.
Excuse me??? :dubious: I’m not *that * crazy…
Interestingly that Husky is available with airbags. Given that taildraggers are commonly involved in relatively minor landing accidents (compared to a high speed terrain impact), it seems like a great idea. I’d buy one if I could!
Used ones at controller.com start at 200 kilobucks. Maules are considerably cheaper.
But do they have airbags? In reality I’d have to go for a Maule if only because I’d be able to carry an extra person or two.
I’ve never flown a Maule (or other aircraft with conventional landing gear), but I think the MX7-180A and a Cessna 172 Skyhawk are comparable speed-wise. The Maule definitely has the Coolness Factor going for it, but you usually don’t have to re-skin a Cessna. Right now there’s a 1995 MX7-180A going for under $70K. (There’s also a '66 M4-145 for $40K.)
Quite affordable eh. I used to fly a Maule 235C. It was a bit over powered really. It would cruise in the yellow arc on the ASI and you had to be very careful not to blow through your flap speed after take-off. It would go anywhere though. One of the nicest flights I’ve had was when I took my wife (girlfriend at the time) through the southern alps of New Zealand across to the west coast and landed in a secluded spot near a river where we had a picnic and spent the afternoon lazing around before flying home. The owner of the aircraft didn’t have a licence so I flew him around a bit as well.
Or more, in a formal flying club.
But you have to *want * to own your own plane, something entirely distinct from wanting to fly, if you’re only doing it as a weekend hobby. The cost per hour of renting from an FBO, without the maintenance and storage and innumerable other hassles that come with ownership, is going to be less than sole ownership unless your flying is in the hundreds of hours per year. A recreational flyer will rarely clock nearly that much.
1920, don’t know if there’s an STC for Maules (which just look funny to me, but YMMV), but shoulder harnesses with built-in airbags are available for retrofit on the more common light aircraft types.
A common figure I’ve heard is 300 hours per year – nearly six hours per week.
That’s what I’ve seen too, but obviously your assumptions mean everything. I haven’t seen an update since the fuel price spike, but the ability of FBO’s to buy at wholesale would raise the break-even point in hours to even more.
I flew around 50 hours each of the last 2 years, and I don’t think I’d even *want * to fly 300.
As I said, I’ve been spending my money on other things (and there was a rough patch a few years ago as well); so it’s been quite a while since I’ve flown. But I don’t know if fuel prices would increase the number of hours to break even. I think what requires the flying hours is the insurance, registration, annual inspections, tie-down… The fixed costs. The more you fly, the lower the fixed costs are per hour. But more flying also means higher expenditures in fuel, oil, and TBO reserve.
Don’t tease me.
(And yes, I have an A-4 POH around here somewhere.)
Johnny, my ex-FIL’s first plane was a WWI Betty that he bought by mail-order, IIRC. It didn’t all come in one box…
You mean Jenny?
Yeah, the Japanese didn’t have many Bettys left by the end of the war. Or anything else, for that matter.
Maybe…
On further looking, it appears it might have been a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”. I wish he’d still had her when I knew him…