"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
If you own your own aircraft, could you discuss:

1. The make and model.

1946 Ercoupe 415-C

2. Whether you bought it new or used (if used, a bit of history on
it).

Bought it used in 2002. The plane was first sold to a someone in Oklahoma
City on March 5, 1946. From there, it went to Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and
Iowa (when I bought it). I took it from Iowa to Texas, back to Iowa and now
in Minnesota. I got the FAA CD-ROM a couple weeks ago and looked through its
entire history. IMHO, worth ordering for your plane

3. The cost to buy it.

I paid $9,000

4. The way you financed the purchase.

Cash

5. Your approximate yearly costs for operation, maintenance, and
insurance.

Varied from $200 to $1,000 for annual inspections and maintenance per year.
Also approximately $800 for insurance per year. Hangar rent ranged from $400
to $1,000/year depending on where it was hangared. So the fixed annual fees
ranged from $1,400 to $2,800 per year.

6. Your approximate yearly investment in training, licensing, medical
exams, etc. (to keep current as a pilot, as opposed to just the costs
related to a specific aircraft).

Biennial flight review and medical is about $150 every 2 years. A medical
($100 of it) isn't required to fly as Sport Pilot*.

I'm just curious about how much it actually costs to own and fly an
aircraft. I get the impression that it requires either being quite
wealthy or making severe sacrifices and never flying anything better
than a junky tin can.

This year, the total annual/maintenance, hangar and insurance (fixed costs)
came to around $2,500. I only flew about 25 hours during the year (between
annual/maintenance) so it was $100/hour to fly, not counting the fuel and
oil costs per hour (approx. $25/hour). If I had flown 100 hours during the
year, it would have been ~$50/hour (total) to fly.

This is the reason why my aircraft sale is pending. Paid $9,000 for it 4
years ago, flew it over 100 hours and selling (pending) it for $16,000. I'm
getting most (all?) of the money that I have put into it for maintenance and
annuals, etc., so overall, it WAS cheap to fly!

*I can fly my Ercoupe under Sport Pilot rules; no medical required but have
renewed my medical anyways because I like to be able to (or have the option
to) fly at night or to fly something bigger like a C-150.

-Greg B.