As many know from previous post, I have been looking for a Plane that I can continue learning to fly in while reducing the Rental cost... found a couple nearby, but here's the kicker: For many, many years I've wanted a 1977 or prior Ford Bronco: doesn't one turn up that's absolutely mint!
https://watertown.craigslist.org/cto/d/ford-bronco/6224083518.html  

Then there are a couple Planes nearby that might fit the bill:
https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Single+Engine+Piston&make=CESSNA&model=150G&listing_id=2270498&s-type=aircraft

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Single+Engine+Piston&make=STITS&model=SA-11A+PLAYMATE&listing_id=2269849&s-type=aircraft

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Single+Engine+Piston&make=CESSNA&model=150A&listing_id=2274661&s-type=aircraft

Now what am I going to do?

The bronco can only fly once.....   you know what the right answer is....  

There's plenty of planes available, but damn few Broncos like that one.

The 3 planes you listed aren't that special anyway.

Not special, just within my budget. (play money)

Have you budgeted for the ancillary costs like tie down, maintenance, insurance, training, etc?

I wouldn't want any of those airplanes personally. I made a mistake when I bought my boat with a stern drive. I bought the boat for around $10,000, which was a great deal on the boat. 24'; ten years old, 260HP engine with 250 hours on it. Since buying it, I've had the stern drive resealed: $700; shift cable replaced: $400, manifolds for around $2000 and now it's getting a new fuel pump. $3500 because some jackass decided it would be a good idea to mount the fuel pump underneath the engine and make it so the only way to get to it would be to remove the entire engine. In hindsight, the extra up-front cost of an outboard would have been a much better choice. Aside from the amount of money you have sitting in an asset, I don't believe that owning any of those airplanes will be any cheaper, and may likely be more, than an airplane that costs twice as much, that you can sell for twice as much.

I'm very happy with my purchase decision on my Mooney though. I am glad that I did not buy any of the < $20,000 airplanes out there because actual ownership costs are not that much different between the planes. Your ownership costs per mile traveled are better in a many airplanes that cost more than those that you're looking at. There's a point where you hit diminishing returns, but if you're pinching enough pennies to go for a $15,000 airplane and are not an A&P to where maintenance costs will be almost negligible, I highly recommend getting something that's easier to resell and more desirable. Even a $25,000 Cherokee 140, in my opinion, would be a much better choice than those airplanes that you've seen listed.

While I'm not an "A&P" mechanic, I am a Heavy-duty Truck, and Special purpose vehicle/equipment mechanic.....I wonder what the requirements for Airframe and Power certification are.
I get it about "going cheap" vs paying more for a better value, and yes I'm keeping ancillary expenses in mind....no wonder why there are so many outlaw pilots.  

Well the Bronco ad was deleted so.......buy the plane.

Quite a bit actually.

A 2-year school or acceptable equivalence (military training, apprenticeship under an IA/A&P), 3 tests (written, oral and practical), a 2nd class medical just to work on the engine and airframe.

To sign off the annual (IA privileges), you have to add experience as an A&P, more schooling and tests and continuing education.

Being a ground vehicle mechanic helps with knowledge but means zero toward being an A&P mechanic. There ARE a lot of outlaw pilots and mechanics and you usually read about them in the news... or obituaries.

Huh? You need a medical to be a mechanic? Really? (Serious question, got a reference?)

bronco posting got deleted

I have owned a few planes in my life..... The purchase price is not the big deal, it is the MX that will get you. I have paid 2/3 of the purchase price of my acro plane in the last 4 annuals. I was told to budget 20-25K dollars for an engine rebuild.

So you could buy one of those 20K dollar planes.... And then drop 15K dollars into it the next month.

Go into it with your eyes wide open.... The worst thing that can happen is you buy a plane and then have some issue that you can't pay to fix and the plane just sits and corrodes.

I learned to fly in a 150 with the same paint as the first one. Fun little plane, and my uncle still owns it. He's teaching his grandson to fly it now. Quite a few family members have leaned to fly it it. I thinking a '69.

Well, since we can't see the bronco link anymore, I'll have to assume this is an "OJ" reference.  

No, you don't.  Only pilots and controllers need medicals.


https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/lbb/local_more/media/ap_testing.pdf

I'm pretty sure someone scarped up the Bronco, looking at what beaters are going for, it was a bargain.

Engines: it's really too bad they are so damned expensive, but it's easy to how they get to be that way.  

I didn't realize it until after I had gotten to know them, how many "outlaw" there were....all but of one them is dead.

Annuals have a way of increasing in cost, when the owners have been doing their own maintenance and ignoring the limitations the regs place on what they can do.

It tends to follow the pattern of noticing something that makes the mechanic go WTF?, digging into it a bit more to try to understand just what was done, then taking a much closer look at everything, after realizing that somebody has been working on the plane without a basic understanding of the system they were working on.

It's easy to get somebody killed, if you don't know what you are doing.  I've worked at shops where management saw hiring auto mechanics and diesel mechanic as "mechanic helpers" as a cheap way to increase shop personnel.  They always needed extra supervision, and some of them needed a lot of extra supervision because they just couldn't grasp the concept that pulling over on a cloud and calling for a tow wasn't an option.

ETA:  One of the more humorous memories of working at one of those shops, was a senior mechanic going off on a diesel mechanic, telling him what tools he was to remove from his box(and remove from the airport) by the end of the day. The guy ended up breaking quite a few things, before he learned to adjust how much leverage he thought he needed to break bolts loose.


]

My vote on the "outlaw" maintenance goes something like this: your mechanical experience is valuable, but you should not be doing repairs without the supervision or guidance of a trained A&P. You also shouldn't be afraid to fire your A&P if they're doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable: "I may not be an A&P, but I know enough to know that ain't right." Do it long enough, find someone to sign off for you, take the test and add the letters to your name.

I suspect that my engine failure a couple years ago was due to an assistant and not the guy who owned the shop.

Just about everything in aviation is high performance, lightweight, and designed to be operated at rated power/strength continuously. Your standard IO360 is an air cooled four stroke rated at 200HP. It makes that 200HP at only 2700 RPM, weighs 258 lbs, and is designed to run continuously at that output for the life of the engine: 2000 hours. I think of that like a high performance automotive engine being designed to run at peak output power for over 200,000 miles. Most normal category airplanes are designed to operate from -1.52 to +3.8Gs. Consider an airplane with a max gross of 3000lbs, as I understand it (and please, somebody correct me if I'm wrong), that the airframe, which may weigh about half that when empty, is designed to handle the equivalent just under 12,000 lbs of weight under positive G loading and flex to around -4500lbs under negative loading. I've encountered wind shear and turbulence that has put me close to those limits in flight. A combination of fasteners, adhesives, welds, et cetera, make up the airframe. Add in that there is specific knowledge surrounding the different components and purposes for each. A small nick in the blade of a propellor can lead to a crack and inflight separation. You are being carried at an altitude by a combination of thousands of parts, many of which are solely critical to keeping your ass in the air. Margins for error are less and the results of failures are far less forgiving.

Years ago, I worked on a Duchess that had been purchased a few months before. The new owner was wanting the engines looked at, because they "wandered" quite a bit in cruise. Turned out that the control cables had been connected at the engine end by getting the nuts finger tight and then cotterpinning them. The vibration then wore the bolts about halfway through, leaving them with a very sloppy connection.

Next time the plane came into the shop, it was because engine out training turned into an actual engine out landing.  Once the prop was feathered, it refused to come out of feather.  I eventually traced the problem to the prop being greased with some type of automotive synthetic grease.  The prop just wouldn't properly cycle with that stuff.

The previous owner had done all his own maintenance, and had some old retired guy sign off the annuals after looking the plane for 15 minutes (no tools ever touched his hands).

The next annual was very expensive, due to all the recurring ADs that had been ignored for years.

You generally don't buy a plane because it is cheaper than renting.

Why not?  That's exactly what I'm looking at doing.  I'll be building time and working towards my IRF certification at about $30 an hour less than renting.

I agree. At 1000 hours in a Mooney, I am still at less than $100/hr, and that includes an engine and 5 years in a hangar that's $500/month.

It depends on how often you are flying.

I've seen planes that didn't fly enough to need an oil change between annuals. I'd hate to see the numbers on what their cost per flight hour works out to.