When I can escape the day job my friends and I mess around building and flying home built aircraft. Engines (experimental admittedly but still lycoming) and props cost about what they did when I entered the game 25 years ago. A lot of the other hardware (starters/alternators etc) has never been cheaper.
There is barely a transponder in sight, and VFR will get you there 80% of the time...(wasn't Alaska once home to the lowest proportion of instrument rated pilots in USA?)
There are half a dozen of us within a block or two in our little backwoods town and many more in each town over.
The regulator leaves us alone (more or less) and with the good work of a few people can generally be persuaded to give us what we want.
I feel for business in GA, I've been in there most of my working life and concede it's getting a lot harder but I don't concede that aviation is dying, possibly a better hobby than career choice tho..
The way some of you get together and carp on here I'm starting to think you want it to fail.