All of the things that go through your head when you are looking to make a purchase like this.

Now you might be saying to yourself, " I thought he was building?" and rightly so. I was, I am and I will. But up to this point in my aircraft project I haven't had so much invested that I stopped considering a purchase. Not enough skin in the game so to speak. But after this hiatus to accomodate the needs of work and family I basicly came to a point where I had to.... Start again. Mentally at least. I haven't put any serious time in on my plane since January at best and when you start again after a break like that you tend to evaluate what you are doing and why you are doing it, which is exactly why I found myself repeating past exercises. Asking myself all the same questions and filling in the same spreadsheets and coming to the same conslusion.

Something is different now though. Something significant.

It's no secret that completion rates on both kit-build and plans-built aircraft are not high and I have noticed that builders tend to stop building or quit on their projects at certain points. Now these specific points may apply more to plans built aircraft more than kit built.

The first one is the point where you don't have quite enough skin in the build. One of the benifits of "Plans building" is that you only buy what you need to get to the point that you are working on. (buy a little bit, build a little bit) This means that up to a certain point that you really don't have that much money tied up in the project. In the case of a Cozy IV, you can build the entire airframe for roughly $14K if you do everything per plans and are frugal, which many builders are. Granted, you don't have an engine or avionics but you do have an airframe which is something.

Now depending on your financial situation and the understanding, or lack of understanding by your spouse or significant other, the point at which the investment becomes significant and you can no longer walk away in good conscience varies wildly, but it is certainly a mix between money and time. Do not underestimate the real value of time here.

I was at a point where the financial investment was not quite enough for my wife or I to say, "Why buy when you have so many dollars tied up in building?", and the time investment was not so much that my spouse didn't say, "Don't even think about it. You've spent 3 years in that garage working on that thing, get your rear out there and finish it."

This is a dangerous zone for builders because the desire to fly can overwhelm the things that caused you to build in the first place. Now if you made the right decision to begin with and you haven't hit the lottery in the interim you'll probably come to the same conclusion that you did the first time around and begin building again. But I believe that I now have enough skin in the game...

My wife and I decided to do something that many builders do... Figure out a way to make the flying come sooner with our project. (see how it became our project :-D ) We decided to purchase some of the larger pre-fabricated parts. For us, these parts include largely completed wings, winglets and spar. These parts are a significant effort and not having to totally complete them is a big savings in time and brings forward the day that the wheels will finally leave terra firma. Kit builders call this buying a "fast build" kit.

Now obviously the people that make these parts do not sell them for just the price of the parts that go into them. They mark them up. Now for us, the markup was worth it. The time that it reduces the build matters to me and my family but the cost of buying the parts was significant enough for it to now matter.

I am suddenly geeked in a way that I have never been. It is becasue I am going to finish this aircraft and I now know for sure. I am... we are commited.