Buying an airplane
As a former airplane owner AND former boat owner I can more than relate to this strip 😉
It’s probably going to be a while before I will own either again. Boats are best rented for sure. We had a lot of fun with the plane but the guys I owned it with moved away and I wasn’t using it enough to justify the investment. I do know a lot of people though who own a plane and use it on regular basis for work and for transportation. Depending on where I end up and if it makes sense as transportation, I can totally see myself owning another plane. Not sure about another boat though, LOL.
We really love this strip because it’s so “typical Chuck” and how the guy just walks away after being ridiculed. Chuck sees a Cessna as a bad idea and an old WW2 warplane as investment. On the other hand, if you look at what a flying Mustang or Corsair currently goes for, he might even be right. Not sure how much you need to put into it though to get these things sold for millions. Also, note I said “flying” … and “might” be right …
Mike and the “Chickenhawk”
This remembers me this old joke :it’s easy to become millionnaire in the aviation business. All you have to do is to start as billionaire…
I wouldn’t call flying a 172 “fun”. It’s like driving an old truck without power steering. Try a something like an RV-7 and you’ll want to fly more because you’re having “FUN”!
The two happiest days of a pilots life are the day he buys a plane and the day he sells that plane!
Fbs: There is a race team called Small Fortune Racing. It is a play on the phrase “How do you make a small fortune in racing? Start with a large one.”
A boat is a hole in the water you have to try and fill with money.
How much does it cost to own an airplane? Well, if you thought that lighting piles of money on fire was expensive…
I own a share in a little low-and-slow airplane. But it doesn’t really save money. The original plan had been to use it for my flight-training, which would have saved a bit, perhaps, but the engine was too old (year-wise, not hour-wise).
Today, especially after another expensive repair (new cylinder), it’s clear that renting is cheaper unless we fly more than about 150 hours/year, but the main point is that I don’t need to plan ahead. On a nice day I can just drive to the airfield, preflight, hop in and go.
Occasionally it saves an hour or two on a business trip, but we are currently looking for something more capable, that will regularly save two or three hours. Night-VFR, IR, CPL, may follow. In the fullness of time 😉
As to boats, my parents in law own one. They live near the North Sea coast and the way they use it (like a floating holiday home) can’t really be sensibly done with a rented one.
My brother-in-law would say several times a year how ambivalent he was when his plane, which he had not flown for weeks, was set on fire and totally destroyed by the teenage fuelling truck operator…
“If it flies, floats, or fu**s, its expensive.”
scnr. 🙂
Please feel free to delete if too rude. 😉
When I was doing annual inspections, there were some planes that the only time on the hour meter was last years post-inspection run up and taxi to the hanger, and this years taxi from the hanger and pre-inspection run up. What was the point of the cost of having a hanger queen, other than I guess to say you owned a plane.
Greg funny you should mention RV-7s that’s what I was going to say that guy should get if he actually wants to save money
To have a duralumin river motor-boat with outboard motor is NOT expensive… You can go fishing, travell short distances, go water skiing, jump to swim, drive drunk, etc.
If you can trailer it, then for most of its existance it’s not a hole in the water which needs to be filled with money. What do you think? Too contrived? I don’t know, but people have been taking their boats out of the water to preserve them since the days of reed boats.
The odd thing is I’ve watched tons of narrowboat videos and never heard anyone complain about the cost. Narrowboats weigh many tons so they only get hauled out once every 3-5 years to have the bottom blacked. I guess it’s because people live in them so they treat the costs like house expenses.