Time for me to weigh in here...
Well, like many of you, I have done the partnership deal. Sure you get to own and fly a crappy airplane and justify it by telling yourself that it is cheap. I talked myself out of building an airplane for a long time.
My life is pretty simple. I got married out of college, had three kids and started working myself to death to make ends meet. Ten years later, I found myself divorced having lost everything I had worked for.
Two years later I met a wonderful woman (who had been twice divorced and now with a 10 year old son to raise). She must have seen something worthwhile in me because a year later we married. We both enjoyed backpacking so we spent nearly every weekend hiking and camping in the Blue Ridge mountains dreaming of one day building a log cabin.
She encouraged me to follow my dreams. Flying was one of those dreams. She really wasn't too keen on the flying part but she encouraged me none the less. A couple of years later, we bought property in the mountains. Four years after that we built our log home. I could now say that I had built a log home!
I had always wanted my Instrument ticket and she encouraged me to pursue this until a year later I was filing IFR in the rented Spam cans. I had finally joined the very small fraternity of people who hold this distinction.
But I wanted the big kahuna... I wanted to OWN a plane, even a small part of a plane. Before long, I bought into a part of a Cherokee. The trouble was , the part I bought was always broken.
Deciding to build an RV is a continuation of my Journey. It will probably never win a craftsmanship award or have the coolest panel, but it will always be something I can stand back and say that I built.
No one says you have to build a RV. But whatever you decide, just do it and say you did it.
