Cory,
PPL - Your biggest hassle besides finding an airplane, will be getting your PPL. Now, if you go through those big fancy schools, like it said before you'll pay big $$$. CFI's can be your savior your devil. I fired my first guy, as we were getting nowhere fast and my Father who's a PPL, started questioned the gentleman's motivation. The final straw was when I started to have work around his schedule and times became limited as I am a school teacher. This guy was a full-time Instructor.
Instructor #2 - Was a Instructor from the local Community College, who was starving and I was his first non-college student, so he was use to a strict curriculum and had never signed anyone off outside the college, who did the check rides. So let's just say the to many hours I had invested with first instructor, were erased back to zero. Having access to my fathers plane, I had built up a lot of solo time, which probably equaled at least 80 or 90 hours. So when I started with #2, he didn't like how I flew. I was safe and capable, but he wanted to re-train me. Long story short, my student license was about to expire and I finally said to my instructor, look I've got a ridiculous amount of hours. Sign me off and let me try with the a examiner. Once I found an examiner, who could get his "fat butt" in a 150 with me, it was .6 of an hour check ride that ended with my PPL. I had about 180 hours of total flying time, with about 80 of that being dual instruction. My PPL was more frustrating than being married!
Not knowing your airport or if there are other airports near you, my suggestion, is to seek out a club, that accepts students pilots. We have one here in Jackson, that with a $250 initial fee, and a $50 a month fee, you can fly one of their 3 172's. I think it was around $50 dollars wet! So with an instructor it worked out to about $75 per hour.
Tom Winter, did this if you remember in an earlier post and it seems to work for a lot of guys. Also, join some organizations at your airport(s) it's the networking, that may hook you up with an individual who looking for a partner. In our case, my father got hooked up with an elderly gentleman who was way to old/sick to fly, but loved to own an airport and he and Dad became 50/50 partners. Dad did all the maintenance and flying the guys airplane got used. When he died some years later, dad ended up with the other 50 percent.
Moral of our ramblings! Getting your PPL and owning an airplane is like dating and getting married. You want to find the right one! Some times the annuals/anniversaries are expensive!
