I've been seeing this MX7-180A (the green/white sheriff's dept plane) show up online the last couple months. Looks pretty nice and all, yesterday I started checking into it more.
Curious what the posters here think of it for being a first purchase.

http://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?cat ... e=aircraft


Here is the damage history report from the NTSB. Ground loop April 11, 2010.
http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviat ... 1102&key=1


Previous post on the forum here from February 2010 (before the ground loop)
http://maulepilots.org/forums/viewtopic ... 0b203828b2


So February 2010 it had damage history already, had 2867 hours, 977 hours SOH. And now, 6 years later, it's got 3083 hours, and a bunch of new additions.

Thoughts?

With the radio and transponder way over on the right side, would that be much of an issue for flying left-seat? Or would it work out better to just fly right-seat mainly?

Looks reasonable and worth pursuing. All Garmin IFR panel is nice, plus the patrol doors and swing out windows.
I'd look it over good for corrosion, Houston is on the coast and fairly humid

Wyflyer wrote:Looks reasonable and worth pursuing. All Garmin IFR panel is nice, plus the patrol doors and swing out windows.
I'd look it over good for corrosion, Houston is on the coast and fairly humid

Why is there a VFR GPS sticker over the G430? Just an outdated database?

I hope you have long arms to reach the 430

Use caution with triad. My plane had 400 hrs since major from them. The cam went at 600 and the rebuilder said there were multiple parts at or near tolerance. Also said there was evidence of poor construction. Hopefully I was an isolated case

Maule988ms wrote:Use caution with triad. My plane had 400 hrs since major from them. The cam went at 600 and the rebuilder said there were multiple parts at or near tolerance. Also said there was evidence of poor construction. Hopefully I was an isolated case

Looking through the logs that were posted on Trade-a-Plane, between 2010 and 2015, this plane only flew for 140ish hours. I've heard that with not much use, as in this case, the cam starts having issues.

That's a good looking plane. It will fit right in with us at the Texas Maule fly-ins. One of our Texas members is David Beaver who owns www.beaverairservices.com. He has a top notch shop at Hooks Airport in Houston. He specializes in Beechcraft but does lots of the work on the Texas Maules. He owns a very nice M7-260. I'm sure he would visit with you about that plane. Good Luck!

multimauler wrote:That's a good looking plane. It will fit right in with us at the Texas Maule fly-ins. One of our Texas members is David Beaver who owns www.beaverairservices.com. He has a top notch shop at Hooks Airport in Houston. He specializes in Beechcraft but does lots of the work on the Texas Maules. He owns a very nice M7-260. I'm sure he would visit with you about that plane. Good Luck!

Thanks for the info! I'll check with him, I live a few hours south of Houston in Corpus. My main Maule-guy is in Montana, so it'll be nice to have someone in this part of the country.

I have the Trigear version of that plane.

My one biggest regret is I didn't get a model with a C/S prop.

YMMV depending on your performance needs, but IMHO a Maule needs performance. 180 is a modest HP rating and it would be nicer to get all 180 on the roll and in cruise.

Mountain Doctor wrote:I have the Trigear version of that plane.

My one biggest regret is I didn't get a model with a C/S prop.

YMMV depending on your performance needs, but IMHO a Maule needs performance. 180 is a modest HP rating and it would be nicer to get all 180 on the roll and in cruise.

I would love the C/S prop, I've spent over a year looking for one. Everytime I see one, they're all newer than year 2000 and selling for near 100k. But I think I'm willing to compromise on the prop since it's got the nice interior.

This plane was available online last October when I found my
1998 MX7-180C.
I didn't look at it further because it didn't have a constant speed prop. My Maule A/P steered me clear of it and I'm in Kentucky. If you're in Montana and want to use around the mountains, I'd wait for a constant speed. LOVE mine so far, so good.

Not a lot of time but that might equal to half an hour or so every couple of weeks and might be enough for the cam especially if they ran something like camguard. We're pretty local here to Triad and they have a descent reputation. I'm guessing they would rebuild with as many or few new parts depending what one wanted as long as it met overhaul specs. A good review of the logbook might help there.

I'm assuming the 430 is just a VFR backup for that nice Garmin in the middle.

All these things are a compromise.

Everything in aviation (life in general) is a compromise.

A FP will work of course. Mine has taken me for about 135,000 miles all over the West and has gotten me home safe every time. Lighter, cheaper, nothing to go wrong. No leaks and cheaper to repair, replace, and no TBO or overhaul etc. Lots of upsides as well.

In the mountains a FP 180 will work. Just requires lighter fuel load and a passenger on the lighter side, and better choices on camping gear etc.

I bought my plane brand new, made to order, for a song (THANKS JEREMY!!) but if I had to do it all over again, I may have chosen a same valued used 235-260 or a 180 C/S if I knew then what I know now.

The price difference was immense.

A reduction of a few hundred feet off a takeoff roll, and another few hundred FPM climb really matters on a warm day with a plane full of camping gear in the mountains. an extra 10 knots of cruise not too bad either.

Either way, you'll have a wonderful plane, just different limitations.

A regular poster here has a longer FP prop on his MX7-180A and it is about the same cruise as the CS version and can out climb it I think.
I flew a CS side by side with him with the long FP in AK.