I’ve been an airplane nut and have longed to have one of my very own for nearly as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I have also been an inveterate cheapskate since childhood. Aviation is a fine vocation for a tightwad; if not quite a job requirement to begin with, frugality is at least one of very few ways in which a piloting career might improve a young man’s moral character. An aviation hobby, on the other hand, requires a certain willingness to throw one’s money down the rathole with little regard to efficacy. Most aircraft owners will readily admit that sole ownership is an expensive way to fly. From a purely financial standpoint, relatively few airplanes are flown enough to justify their high fixed costs. Armed with such reasoning, thus far I have resisted the impulse to buy my own airplane, and have managed to scratch my flying itch in various other ways that don’t offend my cheapskate sensibilities.
At least I came by it honestly: I grew up as one of six hungry mouths born to a homemaker mother and a part-time preacher, full-time carpenter father who made $30,000 in a good year. We never considered ourselves poor. “The Lord will provide,” declared my devout parents, and indeed our burgeoning family never suffered for lack of food, clothing or shelter. An airplane, however, was a distant, unattainable luxury. My dad and I talked and dreamed of buying a vintage taildragger or building an economical homebuilt, but even then I realized that “affordable” airplanes still require more cold hard cash than a prudent man would dare ask of the Almighty.
