Danny: Let me inject some reality into your thought process...
A&P ticket....There are a couple of paths you can take, but all take time. You can go the experience route, but it requires 4800 hours of documented wrench turning time.... Essentially 30 months at 160 hours per month actually doing work. Reading the manuals, chasing parts or materials isn't included. It's going to be hard to find a shop that will work with you on this these days. It may take knocking on doors in multiple states to find one, then you have to have the $ for tools, and living expenses as well.
You can join the military... 4 year commitment, but good training and will be working on sophisticated stuff, but will need to spend some outside time learning the civilian side of things and some older type skills that are ling gone from the military.
Got to school...Be ready for a time and $ shock though...Typically an A&P program at a state school is going to be 2 years and will set you back a minimum of about $20,000 bucks, if you live at home. Go to a commercial school and have to move to attend, then multiply that by 4 as a minimum. It can be done for less, but takes some very careful budgetary work.
Time commitment...outside of one of the very specialized schools attached to a giant flight school, you are going to be in class 30 hours a week, studying another 10+ on average and doing this for two years almost nonstop...consider it a full time job. Also, as part of that, many schools have fairly rigid attendance requirements. Miss too many hours in a semester and you just tossed one or more classes, up to the entire semester down the tubes with no credit for it. That may force you to wait and suck your thumb for up to a year to get back on track, depending on what gets tossed.
Lastly, be prepared to wait for up to three years or more, once you meet the entrance requirements before you can even start classes. I started down the path to get my ticket in September of 2024, and have a potential class start date of August 2027. The school is local to me, and only takes 25 day students and 15 night students when a new class starts. January of 2025, I was something like #90 for daytime classes. I'm lucky, in that I can't start til I actually retire from my full time job somewhere between July of this year and December of 2027. Last email I got, I was #17 on the list...
On restorations....The longer an aircraft sits, the more that will be need to be dealt with. On the 150, based on it's history and probably equipment, you can figure that you are going to drop $10,000 on tires, tubes, brakes, hoses, carb overhaul, control cables and pulleys, instruments and radios before you even get to airframe structure itself. If I were going to do that aircraft, I would get a copy of the repair manuals and start scoping out the 10,000 hour inspection and lubrication requirements, and the required replacement items. You may be looking at $20,000 or more, and then still have to evaluate what state the engine is in. You could be looking potentially at another $20,000 on the engine and prop. To top it off, you will need a hangar and time... Wouldn't be uncommon for this to stretch out to be a year or more project. I need some very special bolts for one of my projects and current quotes are 1 year+ lead times. I've had instruments take 6-8 months to come back from the shop.
Just for background, I've been involved in restoration work on fixed wing and helos, since about 1980 and working full time in the aircraft production world with combat aircraft since 1986. At least 3 of the restorations I've worked on, spent time in, or are permanent exhibits in national museums. I've got a Stinson L-5B that's my personal project as well as a Fairchild AT-21, both of which are in work.
