As I casually shopped around for my dream plane, a few things became painfully apparent to me.
Most of the planes that were on the market were either really old or really expensive or sometime both at the same time.
There were just about no new airplane at a price I could afford.
Even the newest planes were designed with 1950's technology and were not terribly efficient. (Things have changed a bit since then with introduction of certificated Lancair Columbia 300, and Cirrus SR20)
It will cost a lot of money to maintain and inspect planes.
You can't change anything on the plane without piles of paperwork and wads of cash.
The situation was, to say the least, discouraging. At some point, I met a guy at a party who had built a trike. I told him while his trike was nice and looked like fun, I wanted something I can really go places. That's when I first learned that you could build a 'real' airplane yourself and there was a whole community around the activity.
Internet is a wonderful thing. Within a few minutes, I learned that not only there are many designs to choose from, that are companies that sells kits for them. After a bit of research, I arrived at the following conclusion about homebuilding.
Pro: There are a lot of cool, innovative designs to choose from.
Con: It's a lot of work.
There are a lot of different performance and capabilities to choose from.
Con: It's a lot of work.
There is wide range of pricing from a few hundred dollars on plans to around $50,000 for high-performance quick-build kit.
No matter how you look at it, it's a lot of work.
You can do your own maintenance, you can modify your plane, and you can put anything you want in your plane.
It's a lot of work!!
The more I thought about it, it was a perfect solution for me. Sure it's a lot of work but I always liked working on model airplanes anyway. It was as early as 1994 when I decided I was going to build a plane.