PS.......I forgot to say that you are absolutely right to think about buying an aeroplane. Had I not bought my original share I'd probably have given up flying in the UK altogether as renting was crap. I can just log onto our booking site, see if the plane is available, go get it, fly somewhere and then if I decided I want to stay another day, then no problem, no one gets arsey with me and tries to charge me for 2 hrs flying. I also know the transponder works and will still be there next time I decide to go flying
Actually although I have probably "outgrown" my original Rallye share ( as I want to do more IFR stuff which the Rallye is not ideal for), it was a damn good first aeroplane. It was cheap to buy the share at about £6k, it is cheap to run at about £65 per hour, and I can come and go when I want, even out of hours. I'll be sad when we decide to sell** which is looking likely this year, but now I have bigger and better toys to play with
** It is exceedingly difficult to sell shares in an aeroplane, you can never find the right people in the right location unless you live somewhere big. As such we're probably going to try to sell the entire aeroplane as the rest of the group are in agreement. (if anyone wants the Rallye that was in the April edition of flyer last year, drop me a line
).....