I've been into one too many sports, I rode motocross Semi-professionally for a while, almost got my PPL, and fly RC. In motocross, I blew my engine because one day I was furious and decided to take my anger out. Nearly $1,200 in repairs (luckily, Fox picked up most of that bill). My PPL would've cost me $4k minimum. Then that's almost 100 $/hr to fly. That's also just 45hrs of flight. With the $3.5K I've invested, I've flown WAY more than 40hrs just flying. That doesn't factor in practicing on my sim, fixing, building, etc. In fact, I fly more than 40hrs/month on my sim. That's one reason I didn't go to full-scale planes.

I voted 2-3K, but it's really about 3.5k, and that was being fairly conservative. I voted before I tallied everything up, too.