Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by aircraft. I started building a balsa wood airplanes when I was barely old enough to hold an exacto knife. Most of the earlier models were designs taken from different books. As I got older, I started experimenting with my own designs.
A few decades later, I achieved one of my childhood dreams. I had my Pilot's License. Initially, I was very happy flying traffic pattern on a rented Cessna 152 that was as old as I was. Then I flew a few so called cross-country on also rented Cessna 172 and Piper Archer that were just as old. And again, I was happy. As I logged more hours, I became more and more excited about the possibility aviation had to offer and less impressed by the fleet of rentals I had to choose from.
First of all, they were all uniformly old and tired airframe that were designed and constructed using technology and manufacturing method that were on the cutting edge when the Beatles were just barely getting started. No doubt they were good airplanes and served well as trainers. But as it is usually the case, I started wanting fancier flying machine and getting frustrated with limitation of rentals.
There were many times when I wanted to take an over-night trip, wanted to go flying on a moments notice, got to the airport and the plane wasn't back...
I had to have my own planes.