You're starting from the wrong point. Don't start with "what kind of
airplane do I want". Start with "what kind of flying do I want to do". If
I'm a day VFR pilot only, fly airplanes that are older than my Dad, have no
electrics and minimal instrumentation, have been all over France and the UK
and have a blast doing it. Decide what you want to do with your flying and
that will tell you what kind of airplane and whether to do your IFR ticket
or not. Are you happy to fly slow, or just tool around in the sky for the
sake of flying, or do you want to use it to go places and as a means of
travel? Do you want to be able to cruise at 150 kts or is 100 OK?

Once you decide what kind of flying you want to do, then you can decide what
kind of airplane you want. I want to fly aerobatics so I got myself a
Pitts. No "systems", no lights, no gyros, pure day VFR - and I love every
minute of it. But, I can't take a mate to France for lunch in it.
Sometimes it's limiting but I don't value going places enough to part with
the kind of cash that requires. And don't underestimate that factor. A
Taylorcraft is a lot cheaper to buy, own, and operate than something that's
fully IFR certified or fast.

Hopefully that helps a bit.

Shawn


"TTA Cherokee Driver" wrote in message
...
I'm a 160-hour PPL and a club member. My club is great and economical,
but availability and flexibility are becoming big drawbacks, so I'm
toying with the idea of buying a plane.

It's hard to justify on strictly financial terms because the club is
such a good deal, but how many times can you schedule a plane for a
Saturday flight, have to reschedule for Sunday because of wx but whoops,
can't because all the planes are booked for Sunday. Or even schedule a
morning flight, but because of AM fog have to postpone a couple of
hours, but still have to be back by noon because someone else has it
right after you, so you might as well not go since the fog didn't lift
till 11:00. Etc.

So I've been thinking of buying a plane for the sole purpose of
improving my availability & flexibility. Other than that I am delighed
with the club. Because of my job and other responsibilities, if I'm
going to do a significant amount of flying I'm going to need
availability and flexibility without having to plan everyhing way ahead.
Also because of that, and also because of reluctance to get into bed
financially with others, I don't think a partnership is the way to go,
though I haven't ruled it out, but for argument's sake let's say it's
ruled out.

Since this is a philosophical discussion, assume if I buy on my own I
will have to buy a VFR airplane to get a decent one that's affordable.
If I buy a VFR airplane that would rule out getting an instrument rating
because I'm obviously not going to rent airplanes for over 40 hours of
IFR training if I just bought one.

I keep putting off starting my IFR training, so while I think it would
be good to do it's clearly not something I'm burning to do.
Availability and flexiblity has something to do with putting off the IFR
training too, it took me 2 years and 80 hours to get my PPL because of
those kinds of issues and I don't want to repeat that with an IFR rating.

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on having the hypothetical choice of
getting an IFR rating while continuing to rent, versus buying and
committing to being VFR-only for the forseeable future. I'm in North
Carolina, where the weather is VFR reasonably often but not so often
that it's a no-brainer like it would be in AZ or FL or some such place.

TIA