Started flying in early spring '73. Private cost me $750 then, complete. GI Bill paid for 90% of the rest of the ratings. I used aviation in farming as an income supplement...for a while. Got married in an airplane. Ended up in fbo business partnership w/shop-sales-flight school-135 charter-etc.

The hayday of aviation seemed to be the 70s. Airplane stuff was still relatively cheap. Early 70s avgas was still less than a buck. I think a C150 was $18/hr wet. GI bill students were lined up @ the door in the a.m. Cessna, Piper, Beech, Bellance, Champion, Maule, etc were all building planes as fast as they could. Lots of VN helicopter pilots needed to get their civilian fixed wing licenses if they wanted to go airlines. All was good. You didn't need to have much $$ to own either a whole or part of an airplane. Truly there were common ordinary "joes" flying. Airline pilot candidates were usually just graduates of the proverbial "school of hard knocks" that finally hit the big one!

Strike 1 was the gas crunch of '75-76. Like cars, there was rationing for a while. Just like every other fuel, prices shot up. Strike 2 was the interest rates, just like the rest of the world. No one could afford inventory any more. Manufacturers started closing assy lines, just making parts. Some never did recover. Strike 3 resulted from urban sprawl. There used to be 100 little airports you've never heard of in the Chicago area, though most of you have heard of Meigs Field (now a minority park) that succumbed to the need for houses & malls. Fly over them now & they're a memory. So-like farms, that sprawl pushed airplanes out from the city. Hangar & ramp space became a premium. Public airports had to raise their hangar/ramp rental fees to satisfy their owners. Private airports had to raise their fees to pay their property taxes. That "pebble in the water" circle kept getting bigger. Then the insurance companies had to raise their rates because of replacement costs. Many mfg were not producing any new models, or very few affordable ones...so your used Cessna 150 that you paid $4000 for became worth $15,000. Good deal....right? Well, if you wrecked it, what was going to replace it? So-ins just kept escalating. More people were going to liability only. Like other "good ol days" things, it just kept escalating 'til only a few were still flying. I'm guessing a private ticket is now in excess of $10K now?

It's hard to believe by many of the old-timers that some airline kids now have little  general aviation experience. You used to have to "put in your dues", but now it's different. Basically aviation got too expensive for me....and others. I gave up about 6 yrs ago. It was good though.

Did a lot of crop surveying. Aerial photos. Flew frost patrol for a couple yrs over vegetable farms. Lots of ag-related stuff. Mostly made a lot of good friends.

I