So, I actually don’t have much GA time, maybe a couple of hundred hours. I have a TW sign off
and close to 100 hours in the Citabria.
Back when I was living in KY, there was a great Tail Dragger club and I loved bopping around in the Citabria, but there’s nothing like that where I live now.
I don’t want to break the bank, but I do
find myself paging through Trade-a-plane looking at the Cubs, and the Champs, and the Ercoupes, etc.
I love the old planes, and I’m a fan of the stick, but the yoke is fine.
So, if you could keep it on the lower end, what plane would you buy, and why?
Easy to fly or Widow Maker?
Low maintenance or Money Hole?
Something that would give me the pleasure of flight without being too pricey. If it’s too demanding and too costly, you won’t be flying it as much. Something aerobatic for me. A Citabria, Decathlon or similar.
If it’s too demanding I would worry about not getting enough practice in and would avoid those spur of the moment flights.
I have a feeling that my choice is going to be far more…pedestrian.
I was eyeballing a couple of Champs and a Stinson.
The Stinson seems to be well regarded, but I was surprised to find that the Champ was reported to be a little, Spinny, which makes me a lot reluctant to put my wife in it.
The Luscombe and the Cessna C120 are both great fun and relatively cheap still. The Pitts S1C is a lot of bang for the buck and serviceable ones still sell for around $25k.
I think that we had a similar thread here a few years ago and we ended up with - a Citabria. But there are certainly a lot of options these days if you’d be happy with a bush plane.
Pitts would be a hell of a lot of fun. I guess I always figured they’d be more expensive.
Yeah, I’m a pretty big fan of the Citabria. The allure of an old classic pulls at me, but I just don’t know enough about choosing/servicing those older planes to not wonder what I’m getting myself into.
