P.A. you are opening up the whole pandoras box. It might be advisable to cut things in smaller digestible pieces ;-).
I try to fetch some spontaneous thoughts.
Owning a 172 is more affordable then renting, but not as much as you would expect. I did some math on the TCO calculus sheet of my 172 and at 50 hours per year only, it would be more expensive then renting. The significant difference is availability - as a renter I was doing about 50h, mainly due to non-availability of the planes at the local airport at summer sunny days. Now as an owner I am into 120-150 hours per year and costs per hour are about 2/3 of renting. Do the simple math on total money spent per year = at 2/3 but 3 times you spent twice the original thought money ... ;-).
Hint 1: you most probably will not be happy after quite a short time with a 2-seater, if you have spouse, kids etc. You come along alone with some occasional friends, but long run family go 4-seater. The argument to own 2-seater and rent 4-seater if required is a non-argument - they will all be gone on sunny summer days, when everybody wants to fly ...
Diesel engines are cheaper to run on fuel, but more expensive to buy and maintain. For now, there is no need to go Jet A-1 until you are going Africa, where Avgas is of short supply. Look for Mogas and even more interesting Autofuel STCs - i.e. many old O-300 C172 can be flown on autofuel. Thielert/Technify engine do not have TBO (!), they have TBR = Time Between Replacement. They are not OH overhauled, but thrown away and replaced. Having a new engine every 1200 hours (155 HP version) might be appealing, but also expensive. Both, 135 and 155 HP engines also have this nasty clutch with very low TBR time, I guess to remember older once every 300h, new every 600, but somebody has to confirm that.
The corrosion inspection from the "Aging Aircraft Initiative" did hurt old Cessna owners during the last 2 years, but all other manufacturers will follow, so no difference to every other aircraft.
Re-registering an airworthy aircraft is almost always possible, if it is some common machine, but up to impossible for others. Register-traveling/immigration is a quite common game for certain planes ;-). If you have a plane in sight, you have to dig into each separately, as this issue can be dependent on all kind of things in the machine. We just had one machine grounded upon owner change, as the new owner has no grandfathering rights and may be subject to different requirements (in such case the old owner had 3-eyes shut ARCs on his 28V installation - the new one has to replace 80% of the cockpit with 14V versions now).
Last edited by ChickenHouse; 8th September 2014 at 18:11.