Interesting thread. I'm in a similar situation:
- Money tight due to setting up first home
- First child on the way, due September
- Only ever rented
- Love flying, had a crack at aeros and loved it, but it's mainly a slow and expensive (yet incredibly pleasurable) mode of transport for me.
- Gutted about having to hang up the headset, daren't look at the licence. Had a bit of heartache when I called Transair to cancel the chart subsription and when the AME sent me the reminder saying my class 2 was due.
- Got disillusioned by renting, now I keep reading the mags, watching the forums and occasionally visit airfields by car.
- I haven't flown for over a year, when I last flew it was a check in the circuit followed by an hour's jaunt over North Yorkshire, before that about 6 months between flights.
Now I have an 'ideal' which funnily enough I was going to post my own thread on. I'm unsure I'll ever earn enough to own a CofA outright but for me flying isn't an option unless I own at least an LAA mogas (or diesel?) 4 seat tourer with IFR kit outright. The 'ideal' consists of me, the other half (who is the best passenger I've ever flown with) and a 5 year old taking the tent into Europe instead of going on package holidays.
I'm now saving every spare penny towards this ideal, rather than doing what I view as 'frittering' the money on renting. Timescale? None, time I have. Timescale not necessary, just
eventually. Realistic? Maybe not, but it's my ideal. We all have them.
The main threat to this (as I see it) is IFR & Night being permitted on Permit aircraft causing aircraft values to rocket, but that's another issue. Perhaps a more realistic threat is a second baby, which I won't rule out and which will always take priority.
In short I hate that I'm not flying
now, but there's some comfort in knowing that I
will be flying again in the future. In the meantime, maybe I'll dust off the old r/c planes I've had since I was 13 and see if they still fly. On second thoughts, I probably won't. House to fix ready for babies.
EDIT: Completely agree there are some arse holes on airfields. There are also people who, as grumpy as they are, make great friends.